Reverse-engineering is cheap now
simonwillison.net
Reverse-engineering is cheap now
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#2I personally think what has become cheaper is the cost of documentation. Gen AI documentation is flat and explicit, so I sometimes find it more convenient than human-written documentation, especially for APIs. (Many people criticize AI's distinctive writing style, but I don't really care about style in manuals.)
Human-written API documentation, on the other hand, tends to be inconsistent in quality
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#3I was doing this the last few weekends with some LoRa smart home devices and a thermal shipping label printer.
Also this weekend I found out that Claude is better at writing Home Assistant automations than I am and I have been doing it for years.
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#4what are some stuff that people are interested in reverse engineering ? ive never done it before but recently got interested after people started porting mario 64 to the playstation.
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#5I personally think what has become cheaper is the cost of documentation. Gen AI documentation is flat and explicit, so I sometimes find it more convenient than human-written documentation, especially for APIs. (Many people criticize AI's distinctive writing style, but I don't really care about style in manuals.) Human-written API documentation, on the other hand, tends to be inconsistent in quality
Everything human made is inconsistent. I can tell just from an error in schematic which of my former colleagues created that schematic. Everyone of them had training on the job and have thrir signature errors. That’s why automation is crucial for quality control.
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#6I personally think what has become cheaper is the cost of documentation. Gen AI documentation is flat and explicit, so I sometimes find it more convenient than human-written documentation, especially for APIs. (Many people criticize AI's distinctive writing style, but I don't really care about style in manuals.) Human-written API documentation, on the other hand, tends to be inconsistent in quality
This is part of it but the models are REALLY good at reverse engineering. With the Bluetooth printer I was trying to get to work without a vendor app, it built a python app to handle protocol encode/decode and poking the device, and it reversed the driver provided by the vendor to figure out how the vendor was using the device, and so forth. Wi to the LoRa devices we set up an SDR to intercept the signal, did scanning until we found the device, but ultimately failed because we didn’t know the signal hopping algorithm. I have also reversed a Bluetooth peripheral with Claude to figure out how the vendor was setting the device settings, and was able to get the device to work without the vendor software. That was wild- Apple Developer has a profile you can download and install that will give you monitor access to the Bluetooth stack; it was amazing.
So I use AI for exactly what Simon’s post discusses, and am thrilled to be able to rid myself of crap software written by device vendors, and make the devices work without my stuff.
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#7what are some stuff that people are interested in reverse engineering ? ive never done it before but recently got interested after people started porting mario 64 to the playstation.
> what are some stuff that people are interested in reverse engineering ?
Software license/key verification. Sometimes it’s as easy as replacing a “JNE” with a “JE”, or replacing “JMP”, or even just “NOP” some “CMP” operation. It’s a fun challenge, at least for people who enjoy solving puzzles.
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#8Don't worry in 5 years you will have bootloader locked washing machines with crypto paired parts. That are protected under DMCA. For your own good and protection of course.
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#9I'm currently writing a compiler (forever garage project) the speed at which Claude is able to debug with gdb what was wrongly generated is insane. I had not much prior expertise so maybe a professional in the field would be able to do it faster, but now people new to the field are able to debug at a very fast pace as well. It looks at ask code generated, understands llvm, can read and instrument gdb, all for 15$ a month
Re: Reverse-engineering is cheap now
#10I personally think what has become cheaper is the cost of documentation. Gen AI documentation is flat and explicit, so I sometimes find it more convenient than human-written documentation, especially for APIs. (Many people criticize AI's distinctive writing style, but I don't really care about style in manuals.) Human-written API documentation, on the other hand, tends to be inconsistent in quality
Everything human made is inconsistent. I can tell just from an error in schematic which of my former colleagues created that schematic. Everyone of them had training on the job and have thrir signature errors. That’s why automation is crucial for quality control.
Hardware SDKs and API manuals are terrible. Personally, I found the camera ones (e.g., Canon) especially bad.