Purely in the interest of science, I conducted an interesting experiment today.
I wrote a very simple XOR encryption program.
I then proceeded to encrypt windows notepad (c:\windows\notepad.exe) to see what would happen.
I encrypted another executable i wrote a while ago and it became unusable until it was decrypted, but this is not what happened to notepad, oh no...
After it was encrypted, it's icon changed to the infamous 'misc program' icon (the plain white window). Then, about 3 seconds later, it changed back to the notepad icon, as if windows had somehow detected and reversed my encryption...
I'm thinking of doing it to my kernel32.dll file, but I haven't got the guts. I reckon windows will stop me anyway, but you never know.
Any comments on the anomaly?