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=                               Fravia                               =
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                            Introduction
======================================================================
Francesco Vianello (30 August 1952 - 3 May 2009), better known by his
nickname Fravia (sometimes +Fravia or Fravia+), was a software reverse
engineer, who maintained a web archive of reverse engineering
techniques and papers. He also worked on steganography. He taught on
subjects such as data mining, anonymity and stalking.

Vianello spoke six languages (including Latin) and had a degree in the
history of the early Middle Ages. He was an expert in
linguistics-related informatics. For five years he made available a
large quantity of material related to reverse engineering through his
website, which also hosted the advice of reverse engineering experts,
known as reversers, who provided tutorials and essays on how to hack
software code as well as advice related to the assembly and
disassembly of applications, and software protection reversing.

Vianello's web presence dates from 1995 when he first got involved in
research related to reverse code engineering (RCE). In 2000 he changed
his focus and concentrated on advanced internet search methods and the
reverse engineering of search engine code.

His websites "www.fravia.com" and "www.searchlores.org" contained a
large amount of specialised information related to data mining. His
website "www.searchlores.org" has been called a "very useful
instrument for searching the web", and his "www.fravia.com" site has
been described as "required reading for any spy wanting to go beyond
simple Google searches."

There are still several mirrors of Fravia's old websites, even though
the original domain names are no longer functional. The last mirror of
Search Lores linked originally by Fravia directly from his website
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200930162040/http://search.lores.eu/
("search.lores.eu") went offline in February 2020], but a new mirror
came to existence later in 2020 at [https://fravia.net/ fravia.net] .


                       As Francesco Vianello
======================================================================
In the 1980s, he was a member of the 'Esteban Canal' chess club in
Venice, before moving to CES in Brussels.

Graduated in history at the University of Venice in 1994, Vianello had
a master's degree in history and philosophy in 1999. He was interested
in studying the arts and humanities and was aiming to build a
collective knowledge on the particular subject of learning and
Web-searching as an art.

He spoke six languages (including Latin). Fravia participated as a
speaker in the 22nd Chaos Communication Congress. His lecture was on
the subject of Hacking.


                             As Fravia
======================================================================
Vianello was focusing on privacy and created the myth of Fjalar Ravia
(aka 'fravia+', 'msre', 'Spini', 'Red Avenger', '~S~ Sustrugiel',
'Pellet', 'Ravia F.') as protection from hostile seekers.

At least two distinct phases of his internet public work can be
identified.

* The first, from 1995 (starting date of his internet presence) to
1999 was related to software reversing, software protection,
decompiling, disassembling, and deep software code deconstruction. At
those times the WDasm disassembler by Eric Grass, which also included
a debugger, was a popular download.
* The second, starting in 2000, where the first stage left off, was
focused on an (apparently) entirely different field: Internet
Knowledge search. In February 2001, Vianello made a conference at the
École Polytechnique in Paris about "The art of information searching
on today's Internet". He also presented his work "Wizard searching:
reversing the commercial Web for fun and knowledge" at REcon 2005.


First Period: Reverse Engineering ("Reality Cracking")
========================================================
In the first period Vianello focused on reverse-engineering software
protection, content copyright, and software patents. The steps for
cracking software protection were in many cases published on his
website, in the form of essays and Old Red Cracker's lessons.

Vianello asked the community to remove from the web every copy of his
old site (www.fravia.org - now a spam advertisement website),
corresponding to this period, because "The idea was to convert young
crackers [...] The experiment worked only in part, hence the decision
a couple of years ago to freeze that site".
Fravia, [http://searchlores.org/tadimens.htm#ethic "Searching
problems, web problems: Ethical problems"]
Nevertheless, some mirrors still exist. The site has been described
as containing "useful tools and products".

According to the 2001 ACM Multimedia Workshops of the Association for
Computing Machinery, Vianello's website contained information which
could assist hackers of a certain classification who were not skilled
enough "to mount a new or novel attack". His website also analysed
brute force attacks on steganography.

This period included papers related to reality-cracking, i.e. the
capacity of the seeker to decode the hidden facts behind appearance.

Reverse engineering a legitimately bought program and studying or
modifying its code for knowledge was claimed as legal by Vianello at
least in the European Union under some restricted conditions.


Second Period: Web Searching ("Search Lores")
===============================================
The transition between the two phases occurred after realizing the
growing importance of Internet search engines as tools to access
information. According to his vision, access to information should not
be restricted, and he was advocating for a true openness of web
information contents. He strongly criticized the large amount of
advertising on the Internet, which he considered as promoting
unnecessary products to a population of naive consumers.

Richard Stallman, in his web article "Ubuntu Spyware: What to do?",
mentions that it was Vianello who alerted him to the fact that
performing a file search on a computer running Microsoft Windows would
cause it to send a network packet to an Internet server, which was
then detected by the firewall in Vianello's computer.

In the second stage of his work, Vianello explained how the content is
currently structured on the World Wide Web and the difficulties of
finding relevant information through search engines because of the
growing number of ads that search engines promote today.

In 2005, Vianello was the keynote speaker at the T2 infosec
conference. The subject of his speech was: "The Web - Bottomless
Cornucopia and Immense Garbage Dump".


                                +HCU
======================================================================
Vianello was a member of the so-called High Cracking University
(+HCU), founded by Old Red Cracker to advance research into Reverse
Code Engineering (RCE). The addition of the "+" sign in front of the
nickname of a reverser signified membership in the +HCU.

+HCU published a new reverse engineering problem annually and a small
number of respondents with the best replies qualified for an
undergraduate position at the "university". Vianello's website was
known as "+Fravia's Pages of Reverse Engineering" and he used it to
challenge programmers as well as the wider society to "reverse
engineer" the "brainwashing of a corrupt and rampant materialism". In
its heyday, his website received millions of visitors per year and its
influence was described as "widespread".

Nowadays most of the graduates of +HCU have migrated to Linux and few
have remained as Windows reversers. The information at the university
has been rediscovered by a new generation of researchers and
practitioners of RCE who have started new research projects in the
field.


                               Legacy
======================================================================
Vianello has been described as an inspiration for many hackers and
reversers, a friend of the founder of the CCC Wau Holland, and a
motivation for Jon Lech Johansen to understand the inner workings of
computer programs. Johansen commented in a blog post that 'Fravia's
site was a goldmine' during his education as a reverse engineer. In
his later years, he moved from software reversing to free software and
searching the web further. His website has been described as the
meeting point of the people who wanted to search the web deeper still.

In September 2008, Vianello stopped updating his site and holding
conferences, after being diagnosed with and receiving treatment for
squamous cell carcinoma of the tonsil, which metastasized. His site
was frozen for several months but was updated again on 9 March 2009
while he was slowly recovering and focusing on Linux. He died suddenly
on Sunday, 3 May 2009 at the age of 56.


                          Published works
======================================================================
*Francesco Vianello, Gli Unruochingi e la famiglia di Beggo conte di
Parigi. (ricerche sull'alta aristocrazia carolingia) // Bollettino
dell'Istituto storico italiano per il Medioevo 91 (1984).
*Francesco Vianello, Università di Padova, I mercanti di Chiavenna in
età moderna visti dalla Terraferma veneta.
*Francesco Vianello,
*Fravia (ed.) Annotation and exegesis of 'Origo Gentis Langobardorum'.


                           External links
======================================================================
*[http://www.woodmann.com/searchlores An archive of Fravia's
Searchlores (no longer updated)]
*[https://fravia.net/ Fravia's website (mirror)]
*[https://fravia.net/io13.htm 'Fravia's Real Identity' (mirror)]
*[https://fravia.net/whoiam.htm Fravia's fake auto-biography (mirror)]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20210127194130/https://fravia.net/swansong.htm
Fravia's farewell (April 2009) (mirror)]
*[https://events.ccc.de/congress/2005/fahrplan/speakers/186.en.html
Fravia at ccc congress 2005]
*[http://www.ccc.de/congress/2002/fahrplan/event/443.en.html Fravia at
ccc congress 2002]
*[http://woodmann.com/fravia/index.htm Last known mirror of the
original "reversing site"]
*[https://archive.org/details/Recon2005_Fravia Video of a Fravia
conference presentation at Recon 2005 in Montreal]
*[https://archive.org/details/Fravia_Reversing_our_searching_habits_Power_searching_without_google
Video of a Fravia conference presentation at Recon 2006 in Montreal]
*[http://malaybasu.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/i-have-seen-the-ice-age/ I
have seen the ICE age, by Malay]
*[http://gthorne.reteam.org/ +Greythorne's Privacy Nexus (Fravia's
Partner +gthorne)]
*


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