Seriously can someone teach me how to explain this term?/subject during a family gathering the more i try to explain the more complex it becomes! thank you everyone!
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Reverse engineering is the process of careful take-apart or investigation/analysis of something, typically mechanical, electronics, or software, to figure out how it works – generally without the documentation, or to understand the behaviour to a greater level of detail than the documentation provides.
This is sometimes done (e.g. by hobbyists) purely for curiosity, but is often done (sometimes professionally) so as to modify or improve or customise the function or behaviour for some other purpose than the thing was originally designed.
Reverse engineering may also be done by one company on a competitor’s product. That may be to learn how their product was made, whether or not they might have infringed patents, or to estimate the cost-to-manufacture and hence profit-margin (which may be relevant if making a competitive product) or business-model (e.g. will this be mass produced and be a cash-cow, or is it a cutting-edge fast-to-market “prestige” product that they only expect to sell a small number).
Reverse engineering may also be used to independently assess the “security” of some system or software (especially anything to do with cryptography or security of monetary transactions), and/or to discover weaknesses which could be exploited. The “bad guys” aka “black hats” would likely exploit the weakness, or sell the knowledge to someone who would, whereas the “good guys” aka “white hats” would generally attempt to report the vulnerability to the manufacturer/supply so they can fix it (and likely these days expect to receive a monetary reward for doing so).
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