Reversing CRC32

Question

I'm looking for a way to reverse a CRC32 checksum. There are solutions around, but they are either badly written, extremely technical and/or in Assembly. Assembly is (currently) beyond my ken, so I'm hoping someone can piece together an implementation in a higher level language. Ruby is ideal, but I can parse PHP, Python, C, Java, etc.

Any takers?

Answer 1

A CRC32 is only reversible if the original string is 4 bytes or less.

Answer 2

Cade Roux Is right about reversing CRC32.

The links you mentioned provide a solution to fix a CRC that has become invalide by altering the original byte stream. This fix is achieved by changing some (unimportant) bytes and so recreate the original CRC value.

Answer 3

Read this fine document.

This is C#:

public class Crc32
{
    public const uint poly = 0xedb88320;
    public const uint startxor = 0xffffffff;

    static uint[] table = null;
    static uint[] revtable = null;

    public void FixChecksum(byte[] bytes, int length, int fixpos, uint wantcrc)
    {
        if (fixpos + 4 > length) return;

        uint crc = startxor;
        for (int i = 0; i < fixpos; i++) {
            crc = (crc >> 8) ^ table[(crc ^ bytes[i]) & 0xff];
        }

        Array.Copy(BitConverter.GetBytes(crc), 0, bytes, fixpos, 4);

        crc = wantcrc ^ startxor;
        for (int i = length - 1; i >= fixpos; i--) {
            crc = (crc << 8) ^ revtable[crc >> (3 * 8)] ^ bytes[i];
        }

        Array.Copy(BitConverter.GetBytes(crc), 0, bytes, fixpos, 4);
    }

    public Crc32()
    {
        if (Crc32.table == null) {
            uint[] table = new uint[256];
            uint[] revtable = new uint[256];

            uint fwd, rev;
            for (int i = 0; i < table.Length; i++) {
                fwd = (uint)i;
                rev = (uint)(i) << (3 * 8);
                for (int j = 8; j > 0; j--) {
                    if ((fwd & 1) == 1) {
                        fwd = (uint)((fwd >> 1) ^ poly);
                    } else {
                        fwd >>= 1;
                    }

                    if ((rev & 0x80000000) != 0) {
                        rev = ((rev ^ poly) << 1) | 1;
                    } else {
                        rev <<= 1;
                    }
                }
                table[i] = fwd;
                revtable[i] = rev;
            }

            Crc32.table = table;
            Crc32.revtable = revtable;
        }
    }
}