Live data from Hacker News

Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

youtube.com

11–20 of 91 posts

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#11

The same is true for iPhone apps (.ipa files). You can just unzip them.

.docx and .xlsx are also just zip files with XML and attachments. The bad thing is that the XML is Word's internal document structure serialized and behavior for some values is only defined in Microsoft's code.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#12

I've found that Claude Code works well at reversing java applications. Even if it is fully obfuscated claude can restore sensible names for everything and understand how it all works and answer questions about what it is doing.

I experimented with disassembling 6502 from the c64 California Games. Claude was very prone to bullshit.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#13
post #11

The same is true for iPhone apps (.ipa files). You can just unzip them.

.docx and .xlsx are also just zip files with XML and attachments. The bad thing is that the XML is Word's internal document structure serialized and behavior for some values is only defined in Microsoft's code.

Even pk3 files from the id Tech engine are just zip files.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#14

I've found that Claude Code works well at reversing java applications. Even if it is fully obfuscated claude can restore sensible names for everything and understand how it all works and answer questions about what it is doing.

+1. While vibe-coding (natural language to code) is not such a great idea, we can always check the source, so vibe-reverse-engineering (code to natural language) may actually be quite useful.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#15
post #6

I've found that Claude Code works well at reversing java applications. Even if it is fully obfuscated claude can restore sensible names for everything and understand how it all works and answer questions about what it is doing.

Interesting, I'd have assumed the guardrails would disallow them from doing anything like that, regardless of legality. Do you need to "convince" it to do it or no questions asked?

Claude doesn't care as long as you aren't straight up asking it to write exploits. It's my go-to for reverse engineering tasks.

ChatGPT is full of refusals and has to be jailbroken out of it.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#16

I've found that Claude Code works well at reversing java applications. Even if it is fully obfuscated claude can restore sensible names for everything and understand how it all works and answer questions about what it is doing.

Naming is an area where LLMs are useful; but I'd still use a regular Java decompiler (there are quite a few of these around) for the actual decompilation part.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#17
post #10

What a coincidence, I just got an email announcing that Breville intend to orphan my Joule sous vide stick: the existing app will stop working, the new app is only available the US and Canada and in parts of Europe. Live in another country? You're s.o.l., it wasn't officially sold there. You need a new account as well, hope you like the TOS. All of this for a device whose core functionality -- setting a target temper…

This reads like satire:

The ability to cook with or without WiFi anywhere, anytime.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#19
post #10

What a coincidence, I just got an email announcing that Breville intend to orphan my Joule sous vide stick: the existing app will stop working, the new app is only available the US and Canada and in parts of Europe. Live in another country? You're s.o.l., it wasn't officially sold there. You need a new account as well, hope you like the TOS. All of this for a device whose core functionality -- setting a target temper…

I have an Anova sous vide cooker that is also about 10 years old and has an app, but is fully functional without it.

When I bought it the app was free, but then later became a subscription addon. However they grandfathered all original owners into a free lifetime subscription. Pretty classy.

Re: Hacking old hardware by renaming to .zip [video]

#20
post #6

I've found that Claude Code works well at reversing java applications. Even if it is fully obfuscated claude can restore sensible names for everything and understand how it all works and answer questions about what it is doing.

Interesting, I'd have assumed the guardrails would disallow them from doing anything like that, regardless of legality. Do you need to "convince" it to do it or no questions asked?

I use AWS Kiro, with the Claude models, and its only to happy to help. I give it the headerless ghidra, and decompilers etc... and away it goes.
Post reply on HN