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Learning Reverse Engineering
TheBoostedBrain writes "Mike Perry and Nasko Oskov have written a very complete article about reverse engineering. It provides an introduction to reverse engineering software under both Linux and Windows."
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Very Good article, and I admit that I did not understand all of it, nor did I read all of it. However I did forward it along to a couple of friends who do not regularly /.
Here is a reverse engineering feat for you all...POS(Point of Sale) terminal equipment. Specifically to replace NSC(National Systems Corporation) and similar diamond touch gear. If you can reverse engineer a system for taking customer's orders(think pizza/food), showing it on multiple screens around the store, and keeping track of inventory, sales numbers and statistics, customer tracking and history...wow you would be great. Nobody wants to spend $15-30,000 for a new POS system. Nobody.
Biggest problem is that these small operators spend that much money on the system, that they are obligated and forced into using it for 10+ years, well after the hardware(monitors/keyboards) wear out. Then get stuck purchasing proprietary stuff at the same cost it was at the original purchase price...several hundred dollars for a custom keyboard...get real.
Somebody please show me where there is a project to reverse engineer this with an X window under RedHat/Slack. Even terminal would be fine. The current system runs text only...over 1 pair of copper in a phone plug(rj11).
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
The part i had time to read before the *you know what* was really good. But there is something else. This server probably has the best 404 page i have seen. Some people spend some time to make a really nice 404 page?
:)
Ooo.. now i see. it's ".edu"
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
For an excellent source of reverse engineering material, you really should check out the old Fravia pages. This is the original stuff right here.
Along with reversing tutorials and materials, there is a rich history behind this stuff. A man named +ORC published a tutorial on how to reverse engineer a Windows program called pooldemo.exe. From this text, an era was born. The Fravia website was created and was home to the +HCU. Many people sought after the true identity of +ORC, and he left a strainer (riddle) behind that would take you to a URL where he would be unmasked supposedly. Just look up "ORC riddle" on google for details. Neat stuff!
But now I know why, due to the authors' comments. Thanks for the pointer to the TOC entry though, don't how I missed that.
For the readership out there, I'm sure those will be covered in the future; in the meantime, read your strace/ktrace/truss man pages. Run them on the application you're trying to RE before doing *anything* else. Sometimes, those dumps can provide *amazing* insight into the behaviour and structure of the program (particularly if you're good with 'grep'), especially if you're trussing and using the program interactively.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
There was a slick plastic game called Black Box back when thinking games like Mastermind were raking in the dough. There are Java and PalmOS varieties of the game. It's a nice three-minute game to while away a bus stop wait, and it helps you get in the mindset of what reverse engineering really means.
The inside of the Black Box is an 8x8 square. There are 8 ports on each side of the square. One player sets some marbles inside the covered square, and the other player tries to deduce their locations by the behavior of "rays" entering and exiting the box ports. Some rays go all the way through, some reflect off the balls inside, and some glance off the balls and go out some other side of the box.
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As far as specifications go with hardware...the simpler it is the better. Honestly, do you want to code to something that is unfamiliar? No. You want to run x11 on a Plain old P4 or something with 5 pci video cards in it. vga monitors. Not monochrome monitors running off two wires that make ugly text displays. Something simple to program, and even simpler to replace.
Seriously, you could sell this commercially if you found a backer. Give them the software for free, and sell them the system. One computer, 6 keyboards and 6 monitors. Thats all you need to supply, and you can charge them US$5000 for it. Sell upwards of fifty of these darn things to little mom and pop pizza places and they would be happy, and you would clear $1500 a piece...then start selling to Pizza Hut, Domino's, Papa John's...and make a shitload as they begin replacing their equipment and buying yours.
Be sure to offer them support with certain little things for a specified ammount of time, and charge them like $2000 for a one year service contract.
Modify your code with a couple different modules, and begin handling burgers and fries instead of just pizza sizes, toppings, and cokes...and then you open your market up to smaller chains like A&W, White Castle, and eventually anybody.
there is a need for this type of software and hardware solution, and all businesses feel it roughly every 8 years or so. Thats a pretty good market. Get your hands on some old equipment and see how the inventories worked, the numbers added up, and displayed. Wow. Make yourself a living in 30 long and difficult steps.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Other useful tools are logger from the Windows Debugging Toolkit, which records every API call made, with details of the structures used and so on. Another good technique is to run the app in Wine, which gives you a very high level of debug output which is a rich source of data.