reverse engineering and disassembly

[AK48]

hello, I would like to know if reverse engineering and disassembler are the same subject on this forum, in the past I tried disassembler and I trained myself to unlock winrar shareware, so I was able to open all the dialog boxes and make the recording inoperative, I made this request to know if it would be possible to disassemble a program like V3D which is written in borland, not for software hacker but to study it and get an idea of the subject, the software that I used at the time was Windasm, there was also IDA Pro for windows but a bit more complicated
thank you

[Altra]

Can't answer your question on disassemblers, maybe take another path.

There are a lot of open source and free codes now. You can program using Visual Studio .net, C# , python etc. Plenty of info on making Android apps. Better to spend time building an application from start than trying to reverse some old programs.

examples

https://www.codeproject.com/Articles...e-Plot-Control

[AK48]

my goal is not to reverse proprietary programs to bypass the recordings, I already know how to do it, my bit is simply to understand the subtlety of the program thank you

[Altra]

Okay, I understand. I've been taking things apart my whole life just to see what's inside.

[eclipse]

Try IDA Pro. The process of understanding how the program works is highly complex but if this is your thing you can give it a try.

[Carl-NC]

hello, I would like to know if reverse engineering and disassembler are the same subject on this forum

Reverse engineering includes both extracting a schematic from a PCB and extracting a pseudo-code structure (or maybe even usable code) from a coded micro. Back in my early programming days I would use Borland Turbo Debugger to analyze compiled PC programs, it was quite good at it and remains the best debugger I've ever used. I have never tried to decompile embedded code so I don't know what tools are available for that. I did once send a micro to China and had the code ripped. They sent me a binary file and someone else decompiled it back to assembly. We were looking for copyright violations and found them. The problem (for me) is this leaves you with assembly code and I abandoned assembly 15 years ago.

[AK48]

my goal is not the extraction of a usable code or a coded microphone to copy or reproduce it for commercial purposes, I can do it and that does not interest me, on the other hand, I only want to study and improve my knowledge in this field, I would then have an idea to create my own programs since I am interested in adding imagery to either DIY magnetometers or resistivity meters without however having recourse to an android prog provided on the web
thank you

[Carl-NC]

I don't know what else you can do except rip the binary, decompile to assembly, and study the assembly code. There appear to be asm-to-C decompilers out there but I suspect they leave you with a lot of clean-up work. Still might be worthwhile.

[AK48]

for me, the best is windasm (windows disassembler) for beginners and it includes all the functions I invite you to try it but I'm afraid it only works under WIN7 or XP, after there is more advanced: IDA

[Funfinder]

The main priority is to check out the hardware-environment first which you wanna use:

You don't need "stupid" ASM programable chips if the hardware works with C++, Java or whatever!

This is a little bit the same with new electronic parts, which made the 1950's transistor-receivers obsolete.
As example: My mp3-player inbuilt FM-receiver or my WiFi-router-transceiver just consists out of one micro-chip!
So first you need to find the "adjustable" chip for your task inside of a good working PCB-environment.

Some products like WiFi-dongles have already the right chip inside to use with special Linux code, so you can find and get them.
And good luck with disassembling and "debugging" hahaha - perhaps you don't need it at all if using other hardware and software.

[AK48]

merci quand meme thank you

[dbanner]

I'm still trying to grasp the concept of top down rather than bottom up.

Seems pretty important for AI going forward.

Eventually, code will write it's own code.

Then we'll be in serious trouble.

Come to think of it, programming languages aren't really languages at all, they're platonic abstractions.

[Melbeta]

At one time, there was a Chinese programmer machine, heard it was kind of costly, you could load a binary file into it, switch it into Assembly language, and there on the computer screen, would be, complete with the Assembly language its instructions. Now any other machine, you could get its assembly code, but there was never any assembly instructions on each line of code, but the Chinese programmer machine, for some unknown ability, could resurect that missing assembly instructions!

But I never had one, never knew its name either. Guys in the past were ripping out the assembly language from binary codes. Anyone know the programmer machine I am speaking about? I would like to know its name...
Melbeta

[ivconic]

In the good old days of Commodore 64 ... sometime around 1982 ... the only thing I could do was look at the endless lines of code written in "machine language", that's what it was called then ..
To change some detail in the code; you had to know how to use the PEEK & POKE method
It seemed very difficult to me then. It's funny to me today compared to today's processors. Good old 6502! Later 6510.
There have been attempts to make a hardware disassembler and debugger. I remember as if through a fog that there were attempts back then. But I don't remember the details.
Ah yes! I remember there was an advertisement for a machine that successfully converts any code written for one Commodore into code for any other Commodore.
And then I doubted it was real. But I remember seeing such an ad.
It is difficult to imagine such a machine. It should be a machine similar to a chess machine, but with much more power and a much larger database.
And that machine should have all the supported processors in it.
Which immediately means only one thing: it would become obsolete the moment it hits the market.

[AK48]

hello, all these attempts of the past to try to obtain a source code are now obsolete thanks to "win32dasm" very simple and easy to implement, try it yourself and you will see