Hacker News with Generative AI: Reverse Engineering

Spice86 – A PC emulator for real mode reverse engineering (github.com/OpenRakis)
Spice86 is a tool to execute, reverse engineer and rewrite real mode DOS programs for which source code is not available.
Reverse Engineering, Emulation, DOS, Software, Programming
87 points by alberto-m 4 hours ago | 15 comments
Reverse Engineering PowerPoint's XML to Build a Slide Generator (listenlabs.ai)
Making PowerPoint presentations is much harder than it seems. While there are several LLM-powered slide generators out there, none of them produce truly satisfying results.
Reverse Engineering, PowerPoint, Presentation Software
37 points by walz 3 days ago | 4 comments
A reverse engineering of Linear's sync engine (github.com/wzhudev)
A reverse engineering of Linear's sync engine.
Reverse Engineering, Programming, Software, Open Source
5 points by meagher 3 days ago | 0 comments
TSforge: Reverse Engineering the Windows Software Protection Platform (massgrave.dev)
2025 marks nearly 20 years since the introduction of Windows' current DRM system, the Software Protection Platform (SPP). With it serving as the primary gateway to activation since early in Windows Vista's development, many have come up with clever ways of tricking it, from resetting grace period timers to emulating KMS servers to hooking bootloaders. While all of these systems abuse various activation methods, there has never been an exploit that directly attacked SPP itself... until now.
Reverse Engineering, Windows, Security, DRM
65 points by fraXis 7 days ago | 3 comments
Mellanox ConnectX-5: iRISC reverse engineering (irisc-research-syndicate.github.io)
NVIDIA/Mellanox has made a series of smart network interface cards(SmartNICs/NICs) called ConnectX primarily for server and datacenter uses. In this series of articles we will take a look at its firmware, and try to reverse engineer the instruction set for the iRISC processor.
Reverse Engineering, Hardware, Networking, Server Technology
19 points by irisc-hacker 10 days ago | 4 comments
Ghidra 11.3 has been released (github.com/NationalSecurityAgency)
New Releases, Security, Reverse Engineering, Software
3 points by voxadam 14 days ago | 0 comments
Disassembling a binary: linear sweep and recursive traversal (nicolo.dev)
Building your own set of analysis tools is a great exercise for those who already have some basics and allows you to later move on to implement more targeted analyses in reverse engineering. Even just seeing how the different algorithms can be implemented provides a mental framework that may help when reverse engineering more difficult-to-analyse executable files, i.e. obfuscated ones.
Reverse Engineering, Binary Analysis, Programming, Computer Science, Algorithms
12 points by todsacerdoti 17 days ago | 1 comments
Reverse Engineering Apple's typedstream Format (chrissardegna.com)
imessage-exporter’s goal is to provide the most comprehensive representation of iMessage data available. Message data is stored in a legacy format that appears to be a stream that represents objects.
Reverse Engineering, Apple, Data Formats, iMessage
127 points by css 17 days ago | 25 comments
Reverse-engineering and analysis of SanDisk High Endurance microSDXC card (2020) (ripitapart.com)
Hardware, Analysis, Reverse Engineering
274 points by userbinator 18 days ago | 131 comments
Decompiling 2024: A Year of Resurgance in Decompilation Research (mahaloz.re)
The year 2024 was a resurgant year for decompilation. Academic publications from that year made up nearly 30% of all top publications ever made in decompilation. In this post, I do a summarization and retrospective of both the academic and ideological progress of decompilation in 2024. Hint: decompilation research is back.
Decompilation, Research, Software Engineering, Reverse Engineering, Technology
147 points by matt_d 22 days ago | 61 comments
LoongArch64 Subjective Higlights (0x80.pl)
I get back to work on simdutf recently, and noticed that the library gained support for LoongArch64. This is a custom design and custom ISA by Loongson from China. They provide documentation for scalar ISA, but not for the vector extension. Despite that, GCC, binutils, QEMU and other tools already support the ISA. To our luck, Jiajie Chen did an impressive work of reverse engineering the vector stuff and published results online as The Unofficial LoongArch Intrinsics Guide.
Computer Architecture, Open Source, China, Reverse Engineering, Linux
49 points by camel-cdr 29 days ago | 13 comments
Interesting BiCMOS circuits in the Pentium, reverse-engineered (righto.com)
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, establishing a long-running brand of processors.
Reverse Engineering, Hardware, Processors, Intel
57 points by DamonHD 30 days ago | 14 comments
Reverse Engineering Bambu Connect (rossmanngroup.com)
Bambu Connect is an Electron App with Security through Obscurity principles, hence it is inherently insecure.
Reverse Engineering, Security, Electron, Software
532 points by pabs3 32 days ago | 361 comments
Bambu Connect's Authentication X.509 Certificate and Private Key Extracted (hackaday.com)
Hot on the heels of Bambu Lab’s announcement that it would be locking down all network access to its X1-series 3D printers with new firmware, the X.509 certificate and private key from the Bambu Connect application have now been extracted by [hWuxH].
Security, 3D Printing, Reverse Engineering
69 points by nejsjsjsbsb 32 days ago | 26 comments
Reverse-engineering a carry-lookahead adder in the Pentium (righto.com)
Addition is harder than you'd expect, at least for a computer.
Computer Architecture, Hardware, Reverse Engineering, Digital Logic
69 points by DamonHD 33 days ago | 14 comments
Reverse Engineering a VanMoof E-Shifter – Part 2 – Decoding the Signals (mikecoats.com)
At the end of the last post, I left everyone hanging, having tapped into and sniffed some data being transferred on the wires between the bike and the e-shifter.
Reverse Engineering, Electronics, Cycling, Hardware
47 points by jandeboevrie 36 days ago | 21 comments
Disassembly of Pokémon Red/Blue (github.com/pret)
This is a disassembly of Pokémon Red and Blue.
Video Games, Reverse Engineering, Programming
8 points by cocacola1 41 days ago | 3 comments
Reverse Engineering the Constants in the Pentium FPU (righto.com)
Intel released the powerful Pentium processor in 1993, establishing a long-running brand of high-performance processors.1 The Pentium includes a floating-point unit that can rapidly compute functions such as sines, cosines, logarithms, and exponentials. But how does the Pentium compute these functions? Earlier Intel chips used binary algorithms called CORDIC, but the Pentium switched to polynomials to approximate these transcendental functions much faster. The polynomials have carefully-optimized coefficients that are stored in a special ROM inside the chip's floating-point unit.
Reverse Engineering, Computer Architecture, Intel, Floating-Point Arithmetic, Programming
151 points by mef 46 days ago | 23 comments
Extracting AI models from mobile apps (altayakkus.substack.com)
If you are drinking the Kool-Aid, Artificial Intelligence is everywhere.
Artificial Intelligence, Mobile Development, Reverse Engineering
467 points by smoser 46 days ago | 236 comments
Remote code execution via MIDI messages (psi3.ru)
I gained remote code execution via MIDI messages to trick my synth into playing Bad Apple on its LCD. This blog post is about my journey with this reverse engineering project.
Reverse Engineering, Security, Music, Programming, Hardware
471 points by portasynthinca3 46 days ago | 75 comments
Ask HN: How are you using LLMs for traversing decompiler output? (ycombinator.com)
I need to reverse a binary made years ago, and I have zero experience with cpp, so I think it would be a good experiment to get an LLM to help me in any way
Reverse Engineering, Programming, Decompilers
105 points by mjbale116 49 days ago | 45 comments
MitmProxy2Swagger: Automagically reverse-engineer REST APIs (github.com/alufers)
A tool for automatically converting mitmproxy captures to OpenAPI 3.0 specifications. This means that you can automatically reverse-engineer REST APIs by just running the apps and capturing the traffic.
REST APIs, Reverse Engineering, Tools, OpenAPI
590 points by AbuAssar 49 days ago | 71 comments
Show HN: API Parrot – Automatically Reverse Engineer HTTP APIs (apiparrot.com)
API Parrot is the tool specifically designed to reverese engineer the HTTP APIs of any website. Making life easier for developers looking to automate, integrate or scrape websites without public APIs.
API Development, Web Development, Reverse Engineering, Automation, Web Scraping
456 points by pvarghav 50 days ago | 117 comments
Beyond BLE: Cracking Open the Black-Box of RF Microcontrollers [video] (media.ccc.de)
Despite the recent popularity and breadth of offerings of low-cost RF microcontrollers, there is a shared absence of documentation for the internal workings of their RF hardware.
Microcontrollers, Hardware, Radio Frequency, Reverse Engineering, Embedded Systems
111 points by hcadam 52 days ago | 25 comments
Proprietary silicon ICs and dubious marketing claims? Let's fight those [video] (media.ccc.de)
Custom silicon chips are black boxes that hold many secrets, like internal ROMs, security features and audio DSP algorithms. How does one start reverse engineer them? Let's look at the basics of silicon reverse engineering, what gate array chips are, and how some tooling can generate Verilog code automatically from a die shot.
Reverse Engineering, Hardware, Silicon Chips, Security
4 points by nynyny7 52 days ago | 0 comments
Show HN: I reverse engineered X to Read Threads without Any Account as Articles (ycombinator.com)
Reverse Engineering, Social Media, Threads (App), Privacy
59 points by vednig 52 days ago | 27 comments
I Reversed a Drone and Landed It with My PC (hardbreak.wiki)
In this example, we demonstrate how we reverse-engineered the communication between the Parrot Anafi consumer drone and its controller, which connect via Wi-Fi. The Parrot Anafi hosts its own Wi-Fi network, allowing either the controller or a phone running the Freeflight app to connect. Our goal was to understand the signals sent to the Anafi for initiating takeoff and landing sequences.
Reverse Engineering, Drones, Wi-Fi, Software
189 points by hw-f3nter 54 days ago | 46 comments
Liberating Wi-Fi on the ESP32 [video] (media.ccc.de)
Reverse engineering the Wi-Fi peripheral of the ESP32 to build an open source Wi-Fi stack.
Hardware, Open Source, Reverse Engineering, ESP32, Wi-Fi
326 points by doener 55 days ago | 129 comments
Reverse Engineering the Duco Connectivity Board (github.com/kokx)
My newly built house came with a promising feature: a DucoBox Energy Comfort D325 ventilation system with heat recovery. While the system efficiently preheats incoming air using outgoing air’s heat, its control options were limited to four basic modes through a simple button interface. I wanted more - specifically, integration with Home Assistant. The official solution? A Duco Connectivity Board. But when I noticed it was just an ESP32 in disguise, I knew there had to be a better way.
Reverse Engineering, Home Automation, ESP32, DIY Projects
35 points by kokx 55 days ago | 4 comments
Reverse Engineering the Stream Deck+ (den.dev)
Close to 4 years ago I talked about reverse engineering the Stream Deck to gain full control of the device and remove the dependence on the Stream Deck software. Well, I still really enjoy the hardware, but the software has gotten worse - it now goes as far as to requiring users for an account to download extensions.
Reverse Engineering, Hardware, Software, Stream Deck
175 points by dend 56 days ago | 35 comments