Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [reverse-engineering]

According to Wikipedia, Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation.

According to Wikipedia, Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation.

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How to modify the output of a program for which you don't have the source code

In our company we have a small program (.exe 500Kb size) that does mathematical calculation and in the end it spits out the result on a Excel spreadsheet that we use to continue our workflow. I want to modify the columns, spacing format and add VBA…
Alec
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How to document a file format specification

For a project, I need to work with varying types of files from some old games and related software--configuration files, saves, resource archives, and so on. The bulk of these aren't yet documented, nor do tools exist to work with them, so I must…
Sopoforic
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Reverse engineering: what is it really good for?

I have some innocent/beginner questions: What is reverse engineering good for? As a programmer, should I learn the art of reverse engineering? What are the benefits to a programmer who is experienced with it?
socksocket
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Decompilers - Myth or Fact?

Lately I have been thinking of application security and binaries and decompilers. (FYI- Decompilers is just an anti-complier, the purpose is to get the source back from the binary) Is there such thing as "Perfect Decompiler"? or are binaries safe…
Simon
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Legality of collaborative reverse-engineering

I have been disassembling a large software project on my own, as a hobby. It is an educational exercise and I have learned a lot in the process. That said, I feel that my progress would be considerably quicker if I was to collaborate on the project…
Aidan Steele
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Reverse Engineering PHP application without reading the (ugly) Code

I have this new customer, that has this PHP App. It was written by a single developer that wanted to "make yet another framework" back in 2005. About 3 Years later the developer left the company, and with him all Knowledge on what this thing is…
Manuel Schmidt
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How can I reverse engineer a hash code?

I am building an application in C# that works with a Progress database. The passwords that are stored in this database are stored using a hash algorithm that Progress has not made public. However, I would like to authenticate using these hashes. Is…
Pieter van Ginkel
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Which assembly should I learn?

I would like to learn about reverse engineering, but I'm little bit confused with many different assemblies. So to say... Let me explain! Everytime I start reading assembly tutorial it states it is for MC8600 or x86 or some other CPU. I found here…
StupidOne
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What are some good resources for debugging/disassembling proprietary software?

From time to time, I experience different bugs with proprietary software that I need to interact with. In order to get through these bugs, I need to develop various workarounds. Is there a good book for debugging/disassembling proprietary software…
Kentzo
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Advise on How To migrate a huge monolithic java application towards something service-oriented

I am confronted with the problem of migrating a huge monolithic java web application towards a more service oriented approach. The application has grown for years from what it was originally desinged for and is still growing. That means a lot of…
Tarken
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Problem with runaway number of properties

Rewritten Question I appreciate the feedback and in response to that I'm re-writing my question. I can't give my specific situation (classes, etc), nor do I think that it would be helpful, as I work in a very niche area that wouldn't make much sense…
timbo
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Reverse Engineering a Spreadsheet into a Model and Controller

I need some help with the approach to a specific project. We have a large excel workbook with a ton of worksheets. There are many user inputs, which formula fields pull, return, repeat. This all ends up in a final report. Each worksheet has…
ZAR
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Project (that contains reverse engineering) hosting + license

I made multiple tools for extracting file formats that are found in (commercial) games. Where should I host the code? (e.g. Google Code, Sourceforge,....) Normally it would be considered 'illegal' everywhere, but most of the time they are ignored.…
NopeAndNever
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Make sense out of automatic information gathered from legacy system

I have a legacy system I need to plan a migration for. It's mainly developed in Ingres+4GL (an old Ingres based form system). I have the following information: Data Structures (data base relations and their relationships) All programs accessing…
Pablo Santa Cruz
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How does this C++ assignment work?

I have very limited experience with C++ but I do have plenty of experience with Java and NodeJS. I've decompiled and tried to make sense of a small C++ compiled file and I've come across something that I do not understand. To me this looks like a…
E. Sundin
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