Hello, I am pretty new to hex editing and I'm attempting to find a certain word in a file but the text area all appear as gibberish. Could anyone help explain why that is? I attached an image of what I mean. Thanks for any help!
Why does the Text area appear as Gibberish?
Re: Why does the Text area appear as Gibberish?
Hi,
The right column is just an attempt at interpreting the data as text, and as you aptly noted, sometimes the result is gibberish. Two possible reasons are:
Finally, it may be a text encoding that is non-standard or not supported by HxD, then you will not find the text. Or it may be encrypted or compressed.
This may be helpful, too:
https://blog.mh-nexus.de/2014/12/how-to ... ex-editor/
I hope this helps,
Maël
The right column is just an attempt at interpreting the data as text, and as you aptly noted, sometimes the result is gibberish. Two possible reasons are:
- The data is not text, but some other data type, so the text interpretation looks random
- The data is text, but not in the encoding that is selected in HxD (see the View menu)
Finally, it may be a text encoding that is non-standard or not supported by HxD, then you will not find the text. Or it may be encrypted or compressed.
This may be helpful, too:
https://blog.mh-nexus.de/2014/12/how-to ... ex-editor/
I hope this helps,
Maël