E-Book Review: Introduction to Reverse Engineering Software

What is reverse engineering?

Reverse engineering as we will discuss it is simply the act of figuring out what software that you have no source code for does in a particular feature or function to the degree that you can either modify this code, or reproduce it in another independent work.
In the general sense, ground-up reverse engineering is very hard, and requires several engineers and a good deal of support software just to capture the all of the ideas in a system. However, we'll find that by using tools available to us, and keeping a good notebook of what's going on, we should be able to extract the information we need to do what matters: make modifications and hacks to get software that we do not have source code for to do things that it was not originally intended to do.

Why reverse engineer?

Answer: Because you can.

It comes down to an issue of power and control. Every computer enthusiast (and essentially any enthusiast in general) is a control-freak. We love the details. We love being able to figure things out. We love to be able to wrap our heads around a system and be able to predict its every move, and more, be able to direct its every move. And if you have source code to the software, this is all fine and good. But unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Furthermore, software that you do not have source code to is usually the most interesting kind of software. Sometimes you may be curious as to how a particular security feature works, or if the copy protection is really "unbreakable", and sometimes you just want to know how a particular feature is implemented.

It makes you a better programmer.

This book will teach you a large amount about how your computer works on a low level, and the better an understanding you have of that, the more efficient programs you can write in general.

To Learn Assembly Language.

If you don't know assembly language, at the end of this book you will literally know it inside-out. While most first courses and books on assembly language teach you how to use it as a programming language, you will get to see how to use C as an assembly language generation tool, and how to look at and think about assembly as a C program. This puts you at a tremendous advantage over your peers not only in terms of programming ability, but also in terms of your ability to figure out how the black box works. In short, learning this way will naturally make you a better reverse engineer. Plus, you will have the fine distinction of being able to answer the question "Who taught you assembly language?" with "Why, my C compiler, of course!"

Download complete e-book here (in help html format)