ASO files and decompiling?

[drydo]

OK - lets imagine that 4 months ago I jumped in ActionScript 2.0 and was blown away. Coming from a strong programming background - AS2.0 was a dream to work with. I then started using FlashDevelop as my authoring tool because it was a pretty cool app. Then I wanted to mess around using Source Control with SourceForge just to see whether I could shore up the process. And then I was seriously diverted to something else.

Cue yesterday - HD blows up losing amongst oher things my test flash files and test source control DB. The majority was backed up - but not this and some other odds and sods. Anyway, I've found an application that can retreive files from my damaged NTFS drive - however, not everything is there. Most notably, some of this 'production' AS 2.0 code.

Now I've recovered about 50% of my '.as' files - however, many of my missing files can be found (through this recovery software - Active Undelete and its not too bad) however, they are bearing the file extension of "*.aso". I checked out the source data using a trust hex viewer just to see what it there and noticed that the source is certainly formatted is a similar manner to the original source. Ah ha - is this the compiled AS code that say flash would have used?

So - is an ASO file a compiled AS class / file? And if so, can it be decompiled?

Thanks for reading and any help would be appreciated.

M

[Headshotz]

Probably yes.

Post a sample swf and Ill run it through a series of decompilers just to double check.

[drydo]

Well, its an ASO file rather than a SWF. Please find attached...

[Headshotz]

decompilers could not crack this one.

[drydo]

np - well, thanx for trying.

[Mantigor]

Have u tried to run the File throug a Flash decompiler?? not sure if that would work. BTW i think ASO arent compiled AS files but restore points of some sort not sure though

[astgtciv]

http://livedocs.macromedia.com/flash/8/main/wwhelp/wwhimpl/common/html/wwhelp.htm?context=LiveDocs_Parts&file=00001338.html

ASO files are in some kind of an intermediate internal flash format, which is why the decompilers don't work. I think the trick is to fool the Flash compiler into using your old .aso to compile it into a new swf - then it will be decompileable. I gave it a try with a dummy .as and fooling with timestamps, but it looks like the Flash compiler remembers the date and size of the .aso it has generated for a given .as, and if one of these is wrong then the .as is recompiled. So I think the size of the newly generated .aso has to be the same as your old .aso. If you really wanted to do this, I think it would be possible...