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Free Online Book Explains Reverse Engineering

Posted by timothy on from the turn-around-and-invent-something dept.

Lifehack writes "There is a good online book available for reverse engineering software: 'This book is an attempt to provide an introduction to reverse engineering software under both Linux and Microsoft Windows. Since reverse engineering is under legal fire, the authors figure the best response is to make the knowledge widespread...'"

23 comments

  1. For crying out loud... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The legal issues have to do with copy-control circumvention. Reverse-engineering is specifically protected under the DMCA. I've given up expecting 14 year old Slashbots to stop spouting "Thats a DCMA voilation!" bud I'd expect "experts" to be above that nonsense...

    1. Re:For crying out loud... by FuzzyDaddy · · Score: 1

      Not the DMCA, but most EULAs prohibit reverse engineering.

      --
      It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
    2. Re:For crying out loud... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      EULA's dont have "teeth"
      the DMCA does.

  2. Re:It's a nice overview by Reverend528 · · Score: 1
    While I didn't read the entire book...

    I can just anticipate the number of RTFB posts this article is going to generate.

    --
    Badass Resumes
  3. Re:It's a nice overview by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    was it 0?

  4. Synonym by superpulpsicle · · Score: 2, Funny

    The software industry in general is smart enough to rephrase "Reverse Engineering" to "Re-engineering" to make it more legally acceptable nowadays.

    1. Re:Synonym by smittyoneeach · · Score: 1

      "Right"-engineering

      --
      Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
  5. All Reverse Engineering I could had... by xtracto · · Score: 1

    I learned everything I could need about reverse engineering from the +ORC tutorials "Art of Zen Cracking", the Phrozen Crew tutorials and the Fravias tutorials...

    Oh... those were the days...
    Does anyone has a link for any of those site/tuts?? (yeah yea.. i guess i could do a search in Google for it)[yes, I intentionally didnt made Google a verb =oP]

    --
    Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    1. Re:All Reverse Engineering I could had... by AuMatar · · Score: 1

      Just search google. Fravia took his page down, so you need to find a mirror. The mirrors don't tend to live long. When you do find one, I suggest downloading and saving all the tutorials for later use. I think I still have my copies floating around.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    2. Re:All Reverse Engineering I could had... by rbarreira · · Score: 1

      Actually this mirror has existed for a very long time now. It's also the most famous, I think.

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  6. for crying out loud by St.+Arbirix · · Score: 2, Informative
    This book isn't even finished.

    For example:
    Attacking copy protection
    Lest I be accused of hiding in my ivory tower, lets look a concrete application of these ideas, and some techniques (:
    That's it! It's an intellectual's cock-tease! Pricks. Who posted this article?! Ye gods.

    Disclaimer: My response to this article was partially fueled by anger accumulated in an effort only four hours old to violate a rather uncompliant binary.
    --
    Direct away from face when opening.
  7. Uninformed by mindstormpt · · Score: 1

    There's also the already posted on Slashdot article on Uninformed Journal.

  8. Azureus DHT magnet link for RE tutorials by kyhwana · · Score: 1

    dht://D2D95D86E5604DDD356387412D1F6A7D142694CC.dht /announce

    (Make sure to remove spaces when you copy/paste)
    Will seed for 48 hours.

    --
    My email addy? should be easy enough.
  9. Uh... by grub · · Score: 1

    Since reverse engineering is under legal fire, the authors figure the best response is to make the knowledge widespread...

    So why not publish a single HTML tarball or pdf file rather than a bunch of hyperlinked documents? The "knowledge" will spread faster... (unless I'm blind and didn't see it)

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:Uh... by EzInKy · · Score: 1

      That's why wget is your friend.

      --
      Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
    2. Re:Uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But it shouldn't have to be.

  10. Extremely lightweight by Salamander · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The article (I refuse to call it a book) doesn't really even scratch the surface of what you need to know to do any serious reverse engineering. Yes, it covers some basics of things like debuggers and executable formats, but that's what man pages and header files are for. It doesn't even get as far as telling you how to tell you how to navigate through a simple dispatch table or loader stub, which are often used without any deliberate intent to obfuscate. If you want to tell people about true reverse engineering you should at least try to explain things like dynamically constructed dispatch tables, self-modifying code, and exception handlers used to implement on-the-fly decryption or decompression. Since the world has become so network-centric, a decent description of how to reverse-engineer protocols as well as code should also be considered a minimum requirement. Lacking all of these things, the cited article will leave the reader very little better off than they had been before in terms of actually puzzling out what something does or how it works.

    --
    Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    1. Re:Extremely lightweight by AdamInParadise · · Score: 1

      Hi,

      Do you have any good resources about all this stuff (short of the K&R and man gcc)?

      Regards

      --
      Nobox: Only simple products.
  11. Reverse Engineering by pipingguy · · Score: 1


    I thought this story was going to be something interesting about the traditional meaning of reverse engineering, but it wasn't.

    However, the link above is quite detailed and discusses the ability to digitize real-world objects into CAD.

  12. available for reviewing on The Assayer by bcrowell · · Score: 1

    The book is available for reviewing here on The Assayer.

    --
    Find free books.
  13. Dupe by mnordstr · · Score: 2, Informative

    Previous Slashdot article.

  14. Many promises, 0 delivered. by th0mas.sixbit.org · · Score: 1

    This is not a good book.

    I ran into this book a couple weeks ago, sat down, and read the entire thing. That was not a very hard task.

    I learnt nothing I didn't already know. Every single one of the goals outlined in the preface (including how you will, something like, "know assembly language thoroughly") are not met by this book. I think before they actively seek out a publisher they should actively write the other 95% required for this to have any useful information, let alone be a definitive guide.

    --
    twitter.com/gravitronic