Mastodawn

gedaliyah Jul 9, 2024

Why is it impossible to reverse-engineer closed source software?

Why is it impossible to reverse-engineer closed source software? - Lemmy.World

The first programs were written in binary/hexadecimal, and only later did we invent coding languages to convert between human readable code and binary machine code. So why can’t we just do the same thing in reverse? I hear a lot about devices from audio streaming [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/spotify-wont-open-source-car-thing-but-starts-refund-process/] to footware [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/07/immensely-disappointing-nike-killing-app-for-350-self-tying-sneakers/] rendered useless by abandonware. Couldn’t a very smart person (or AI) just take the existing program and turn it into code?

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foggy Jul 9, 2024

It is not. idk who told you it was.

Disassembling an executable is trivial to do. Everything is open source if you can read assembly.

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LavenderDay3544

The hard part isn’t reading assembly. The hard part is figuring out why it’s doing what it’s doing with no comments or function names or anything useful to help.

This is like saying if you can read English you can understand an advanced math or physics paper written in English without having any knowledge or context of those subjects.