Can't open this Config.xml file which is from my router

wireless-networking xml router

Solution 1:

Can't open this Config.xml

It seems the data being returned is not valid XML, despite the .xml filename extension in the Content-Disposition header in the response.

It is noteworthy that the Content-Type header on the response is application/octet-stream and not the expected text/xml or application/xml.

So it is probably a binary data format that is not public.

The fact that there are some English words and abbreviations visible at the start suggest that this probably isn't just an encoding issue.

is no way to read what is in this file?

Without any documentation of the file format it will be very difficult to make sense of the file.

One technique would be to

  • download the file as Config.xml
  • rename it Config_0.dat
  • make one small change to the router configuration
  • download the file as Config.xml
  • rename it Config_1.dat
  • perform a binary comparison and see which part changed

On MS-Windows you can do a binary comparison using fc /b Config_0.dat Config_1.dat, it will show the offset and byte values that differ.

On Linux you can do the same thing using cmp Config_0.dat Config_1.dat

You should be able to relate the old and new values to the change you made.

Then you repeat the process sytematically. You should gradually build up a picture of the format used and it may become much easier as the process continues.

Using a printed hex-dump of interesting parts of the file ought to be helpful.

Obviously this is pretty tedious and is, I guess, why reverse engineering is an art that requires experience, skill and time.

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