Good afternoon guys, I was wondering if this was an easy task to learn? If there was a program that was available, "out there" that could do it for you? If not, how would I start going about it? Hopefully this isn't a taboo subject here, but please let me know if it is! Thanks for any help!
To "learn" reverse engineering you first need to know what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering A program as in an educational course? Reverse engineering goes far beyond the scope of just computer software or this forum and there's really nothing taboo about it. Someone selling commercial software might disagree, but it's their fault for not outsmarting their users. Basically you need to know what you want to do. Software? Learn assembly and get a disassembler. Hardware? Learn digital and analog electronics and buy/build test equipment. Once you can engineer yourself you can slowly pick away at other people's work to see their implementations. Basically get smart and things will happen naturally.
^what he said. I'm very good with reverse engineering consumer electronics but I have my limitations. Anything needing a logic analyzer, anything that needs to be acid decapped, anything that costs more than $15 to figure out and I'm against a wall. Typically you spend time learning a lot about how to make your own stuff and how certain things work in general and then start learning the specifics. It takes a very long time to be good at anything and shortcuts usually lead to frustrations in my experience.
Well, if you want a suggestion for a disassembler, for embedded processors and select operating systems you can try IDA Pro. You have to thoroughly understand what you are disassembling though...
I haven't really had a chance to look at it yet, my computer only came back online last night, I downloaded it, once I fix my TOOL I'll print it off and it will be my bedtime reading! Thanks for that aye!
It's not exactly easy, and not exactly quick to pick up -- but some of us find it tremendously entertaining. You'll rarely find people that agree on the tools you need -- I (and many others) use IDA Pro, but segher uses objdump and vi (!!). Pick something that you like -- a program, a piece of hardware -- and try to figure out how it works. Try to modify it slightly and see what happens. There's a RE subreddit you might want to check out -- http://www.reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/
PS2Guy - if you still need help and if it deals with MIPS cpu (ps1/ps2) - i can help you . write me to PM))
reverse engineering is very entertaining to an extend. But it really depends on what you do or want to do and so on... i've been reverse engineering software for sony consoles for a decade now, and i still don't understand it at all i guess i'll just keep on going since it still manages to entertain me to an extend. the reason for me ? that's easy, i reverse engineer games in hopes of having import-only titles translated and for various other mods.
