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List:       vuln-dev
Subject:    Re: ICQ Pass Cracker
From:       Mithun Bhattacharya <zixl () HOTMAIL ! COM>
Date:       2000-01-29 0:30:42
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I believe the problem with finding old data in the .dat files is not
uncommon. What is happening is that the dat files are acting as a database.
In a database you need to read and write to it very fast. So what the
software does is if it has to add some information it will append it to the
end of the file and reindex the whole lot. If it has to delete something it
will just mark the area as unused and update the index appropriately. If you
try to increase space usage you will end up compromising on speed. I guess
Mirabilis assumed that messages will be poping up every second in which case
it is not feasible to do any cleanup job before processing the next request.
I can't be sure but if you go through any database file I believe you will
find a lot of old data lying around in it.

A good indication of this actually taking place is the fact that even though
you delete your messages the data file doesn't shrink in size. Once I
cleaned out all my messages in the history and purged the deleted iteams yet
the file size showed no change in size.

What I did (and this is something everybody should do) is run the database
convertor which comes with ICQ (98b/99a). You will notice that it asks you
to shutdown ICQ (you can't run the database server while modifying the
database can you *grin*). What it does is recreates the .dat files. After
doing this my 15 MB of empty space turned in 155Kb or something like that.

I haven't tried the cleanup process since I installed ICQ 99a but I am sure
my theory is correct. So try it - if it works then good for you other wise
don't blame me for loosing all or any message.


Regards
Mithun
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