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I’ve been searching for good freeware hex editors as my current work requires viewing and manipulation of binary files. My thumbdrive also screwed up recently, so I resorted to using a hex editor to read and recover some of the text stored on it.

Here’s two of the better ones (freeware) I found on the .NET below.

HxD 1.6.1.0 by Mael Horz.

© Mael Horz

This hex editor has a simple uncluttered user interface. It loads large files very quickly and I especially like the file truncation operation where you can truncate bytes by selecting and pressing the Delete key. It also has a handy feature to generate checksums for the currently opened file for a variety of algorithms like MD5, CRC32 and SHA-1.

It’s also able to read the memory of currently running applications or the actual physical disks (like my thumbdrive). The memory reading feature is definitely useful for reverse engineers

Hexplorer 2.5 by Marcin Dudek.

© Marcin Dudek

A open source hex editor released under the GNU GPL. Features like viewing of the PE file header and a built disassembler will definitely interest both coders and reverse engineers. Also includes data analysis features like finding byte patterns and data manipulation operations like XORing and byte swapping and flipping. A macro facility is also provided. The only complaint I have is that loading of large files is slightly slow.

At a glance:

HxD

• Clean interface
• File splitting, joining and truncation features
• Load large files quickly

Hexplorer

• Coder/reverse engineering features
• Data manipulation Operations
• Extra tools for editing executable files

I currently use Hexplorer for editing executable files (patching, etc) and HxD for editing binary data files like bitmaps, etc. If I have to keep only one, HxD would be my choice for its ease of use.

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