My Examples on Reverse Engineering in Computers when I was a young student

Note

This is the tenth assignment from my Masters Advanced Network Security Course which has never been published anywhere and I, as the author and copyright holder, license this assignment customized CC-BY-SA where anyone can share, copy, republish, and sell on condition to state my name as the author and notify that the original and open version available here.

1. Introduction

Reverse Engineering is the process of disassembling and examination to study the parts of (something) to see how it was made and how it works so that you can make something that is like it [1]. As I read in [2] in came back to me that I’ve actually done a lot of half reverse engineering, where I disassembled camera’s, laptops, PCs, hard drives, mouse, and monitors, that would be a full reverse engineering if I thoroughly study them and remade them. There are items that I successfully reversed engineering which are adapters and Cisco router’s console cable. For the adapter I just need to buy the parts on electronic shops and assemble. The Cisco router’s console cable was almost the same where I disassemble the cable and see how the order of each cables are connected. Then I proceed to a shop and bought 2 DB9 male and female pins, a few cables, and cover, with later I proceed in soldering the cables and made my own console cable as on Figure 1.

Figure 1. My example of Cisco’s Router Console Cable Reversed Engineered

A process that was originally applied only to hardware, reverse-engineering is now applied to software, databases and even human DNA. Reverse-engineering is especially important with computer hardware and software. Around 1980s San Jose-based Phoenix Technologies Ltd reversed engineered an IBM’s bios in order to make their own original compatible PC to IBM. Cyrix Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc reversed engineered Intel Corp microprocessors to make their own cheaper microprocessors [2].

2. Reverse Engineering In Computers

Most programs are written in high level programming language such as C and Java. The written program is then compiled using a compiler into machine language mainly consist of 0s and 1s which then can be…