Hello members of 0x00sec!
Many of you are familiar or atleast heard of reverse engineering and reverse code engineering. Today I’m going to urge you to give it a deeper thought and hopefully change your view on it.
It is a field that is mostly misunderstood and misinterpreted. The question “what is reverse engineering?” has many answers, most of it are shallow and superficial unfortunately. Now I dare you to think about a different but related question: “what is engineering?”.
Most common and abstract way to answer that will be something similar to: “application of the scientific knowledge”. Now take a pause. Think. What is knowledge exactly and how it differs from information? And more importantly… Where does this knowledge come from?
When you answer those questions what you will see is that reverse engineering is actually at the core of engineering. Reverse engineering is engineering. They complement eachother, one is not possible without the other.
Many people, in the past, have looked at the sky, watched the birds flying and dreamed of flying just like them. But those who asked how we can fly like birds, are the reason we have the field of aeronautical engineering today.
Next time you hear someone saying that reverse code engineering is about reading assembly code and making abstract representations of it, please don’t hesitate to spread this word. Sadly, lots of LOTS of words and concepts, each carrying its own history, are being emptied, stripped away from its philosophy and meaning and eventually being industrialized. You have already seen this. Hacking, remember? You know how it ends. Please don’t let it happen.
What do you think?
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