Say we found an artifact or piece of technology that wasnt created by humans. How would we go about reverse engineering it? How do technology companies reverse engineer competitors ideas?
In: Engineering
They’re different ways to reverse engineer things depending on what kind of things you’re talking about. I reverse engineer data files by looking at the file using the program that’s meant to use it, making note of the fields that seem to be in the file, using a binary editor to look for those fields, and then trying to figure out what the remaining data in the file means.
Similarly, reverse engineering a software program involves using the software, coming up with a few candidate designs for how you’d structure the software, and looking at the binary code to see if you can match pieces of your candidate designs to the actual binary. It’s necessary to be familiar with the assembly language / machine language of the processor as well as the structure of the binaries generated by various popular compilers.
You’d be really hampered trying to reverse engineer alien tech because you don’t know the basics of the technology nor, I’m assuming here, would you know what the tech is supposed to do.
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