What is reverse engineering?
Engineering is the profession involved in designing, manufacturing, constructing, and maintaining of products, systems, and structures. At a higher level, there are two types of engineering: forward engineering and reverse engineering. Forward engineering is the traditional process of moving from high-level abstractions and logical designs to the physical implementation of a system. In some situations, there may be a physical part without any technical details, such as drawings, bills-of-material, or without engineering data, such as thermal and electrical properties. The process of duplicating an existing component, subassembly, or product, without the aid of drawings, documentation, or computer model is known as reverse engineering. Reverse engineering can be viewed as the process of analyzing a system to: • Identify the system’s components and their interrelationships • Create representations of the system in another form or a higher level of abstraction • Create the physical repres
Reverse engineering is the general process of analyzing a technology specifically to ascertain how it was designed or how it operates. This kind of inquiry engages individuals in a constructive learning process about the operation of systems and products. Reverse engineering as a method is not confined to any particular purpose, but is often an important part of the scientific method and technological development. The process of taking something apart and revealing the way in which it works is often an effective way to learn how to build a technology or make improvements to it. Through reverse engineering, a researcher gathers the technical data necessary for the documentation of the operation of a technology or component of a system. In “black box” reverse engineering, systems are observed without examining internal structure, while in “white box” reverse engineering the inner workings of the system are inspected. When reverse engineering software, researchers are able to examine the
Some terms are self-explanatory. Such is the case with reverse engineering, which is literally taking something apart and putting it back together. This can be done physically or virtually, and the intent is to figure out how something works in order to create something similar. Reverse engineering has been done for many centuries, almost as long as people have been creating things. Sometimes, reverse engineering is done with the purpose of improving on an existing creation while other instances of reverse engineering involve stealing technology. The latter has especially been the case with weapons throughout the history of warfare. It’s not just weapons, that are subjects of reverse engineering. Everyday things like vehicles, DVDs, and appliances are the subject of intense scrutiny in quarters around the world. Some companies make a habit of importing goods from other countries, taking those goods apart piece by piece, and then using reverse engineering to make their own. Reverse engi
by Bobby Garner Aug 17, 2004 Why would we talk about one of the science disciplines as a followup to an article on the deceptive entertainment methods used by modern media to conceal the truth? Because it is through techniques such as this that we are able to see through the smokescreen and get a clear image of the real scene that lies beyond. This is especially true in the case of television. They seldom lie outright with their words. The words are chosen very carefully (cautious) for this reason. The lie exists in the mental images which those words induce. This is supplemented with the visual images flashed on the screen. If you focus on that process, you will believe whatever they want you to believe, but you won’t know what really happened. Exceptions to this are in those instances where the news relates to “the plan”. If instead you focus your attention on the inverse of such imposed mental images, you will understand what is meant by the statement that the real news is more evid
From a purely technical sense, reverse engineering is the taking apart of something to figure out how it works. Legally, it’s a bit more complicated. This is what Judge Canby had to say on the matter in the recent Sony vs. Connectix reverse engineering case: Reverse engineering encompasses several methods of gaining access to the functional elements of a software program. They include: (1) reading about the program; (2) observing “the program in operation by using it on a computer;” (3) performing a “static examination of the individual computer instructions contained within the program”; (4) performing a “dynamic examination of the individual computer instructions as the program is being run on a computer. Id. at 846. Method (1) is the least effective, because individual software manuals often misdescribe the real product. See id. It would be particularly ineffective in this case because Sony does not make such information available about its PlayStation. Methods (2), (3), and (4) req
