Software reverse engineering

Software Reverse Engineering
Presented by: Parminder Singh
Roll no: 1607116

Contents
 What is Software Reverse Engineering?
 Why do we need it?
 Where it is used?
 RE tools
 Scope and Tasks
 Limitations
 Conclusion

Reverse Engineering
Reverse engineering also called back engineering,
is the processes of extracting knowledge or design
information from anything man-made and re-
producing it based on the extracted information.

Software Reverse Engineering
It is the process of analyzing a software system to
extract design and implementation information
and create representations of the system in another
form or at a higher level of abstraction.
Engineering a
Software
Reverse
Engineering
Concept Software
Software Concept

Requirements
Analysis
Design
Implementation
Forward
Engineering
Reverse
Engineering
Software Engineering

Why we need it?
 Recovery of lost information
 Providing proper system documentation
 Assisting with maintenance
 Facility of software reuse
 Synthesize higher abstraction
 Discovering unexpected flaws and faults

Where it is used?
 In software design, reverse engineering enables
the developer or programmer to add new
features to the existing software with or without
knowing the source code.
 Reverse engineering is also very beneficial in
software testing, it helps the testers to study the
virus and other malware code.
 The third category where reverse engineering is
widely used is in software security.(Malicious
Software, Cryptographic algorithms)

Reverse Engineering Tools
 System Monitoring Tools
• Network activity, file access and register
access
 Disassemblers
• Translate binary code to assembly code
 Debuggers
• It used in disassembling mode to set break
points and step through program execution

Continue…
 Decompilers
• Attempt to produce high level code (e.g, c)
from an executable binary code.
 Hex Editors
• Read executing program from RAM
• Enable the editing of running hexadecimal
code

The Reversing Process
 System Level Process
• Techniques that help to determine the internal
structure.
• Most of the information comes from O/S ,hence
O/S monitoring utilities.
 Code Level Process
• Techniques provides detailed information from
selected code segment
• Involves extracting design concepts and
algorithms from the binary code

Scope and Task of SRE
 Redocumentation and/or documentation
generation
 Recovery of design approach and design details
at any level of abstraction.
 Identify reusable components
 Understanding high level system design

Limitations
 Illegal and frowned upon
 Limited understanding of design, research time
and cost
 Bugs may be introduced during the process
 Lack of information may cause failure

Conclusion
• Software Reverse Engineering is a new research
area among software maintenance
• It includes activities of understanding the system
and recovery info from system
• Program understanding is the most important
subset of Reverse Engineering
• Discovery of abstraction is key issue

References
 Reverse Engineering and Design Recovery: A
Taxonomy by Elliot J. Chikofsky and James H.
Cross II
 The Problem of Reverse Engineering by Robert W.
Gomulkiewicz and Mary L. Williamson
 Answers, Limitation of Reverse Engineering
 Wikipedia, Reverse Engineering
 Informit, Reverse Engineering Principles

Software reverse engineering

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