Reverse Engineering Proprietary Programs

[[Gandalf]]

Inspired by the 'hacking' topic.

What do you think of reverse engineering closed source (and potentially commercial) programs to expose their underlying algorithms to the general public? Is it moral? What does it achieve? Would you do it?

There are cases where it is commonly accepted, such as to understand and detect viruses, however it becomes less clear in an honest competitive environment...

[Sniper4Life]

well since i made the hacking topic i feel like i need my input in this

i think reverse engineering the software is DEFINITELY A BAD IDEA
first of all
1.your now a cracker
2.your going to jail
3.your really going to piss some people off

to me it is unmoral
you have exposed someone's(probably a big group') work without their consent

say if someone hacked into IBMs mainframe
they exposed the company...
the company could potentially go bankrupt

millions get fired
world is a worse place now

so to conclude
i wouldnt do it

ps-srry for the bad spelling and grammar plus punctuation

[Tony]

It's legal to reverse engineer software systems for the purposes of interoperability. That is, it's fair game to break apart MS Word, so that Open Office could open and save to .doc files.

[Sniper4Life]

yes but expose their source code to the general public?

i think wat gandalf is trying to say is like...basically make a commercial product illegally open sourced

if you know what i mean

[[Gandalf]]

Well, in the case of MS Word or Open Office, saving the files is more of a side effect of the actual purpose of the program... I was thinking more along the lines of releasing whatever makes the program work and work uniquely, for example some AI code.

[Tony]

I think we are getting into IP territory here then. Copyright vs. Patent is a common debate for software.

[SNIPERDUDE]

immoral in my opinion.
I'd rather just use the source code to develop upon and submit my own. Although I wouldn't completely plagiarize by using their exact work, more for reference.

[Tony]

The "for reference" could still land you in trouble. I think the term "clean room" applies to software development as well.

In most cases the interesting parts of the software are the actual algorithms, not their specific implementations.

[Dan]

Reverse engineering software is important for securtiy reasons. If no secruity researchs did it to find expolites they would not get reported to the peoleop who can cahnge the source and would not be found out intill some one uses them in a virus, worm or other malware.

Also if reverser engerining software is immoral that would mean openT and other projects to recreate turing are immoral, not to mention projects like WINE, any virutal mashen or emulator, almost all the linux drivers where the hardware manfucator dose not make a dirver for linux, any PDF read/creator other then adobe acrobat, open office and any other program that can read word, excle, and power point slides, Gnash (open source flash player) and so on.


I don't think you can clasify reverse engineering as moral or immoral in it's self but only in how it's used.

Sniper4Life wrote:

1.your now a cracker
2.your going to jail
3.your really going to piss some people off

1. "Cracker" noramly refurse to some one who breaks passwords, authenticaion or DRM type things and not reverser engerining. So unless thats the type of system they are dealing with i think a more acurite word would just be "hacker" but the deftions are largery a matter of opinion.

2. In canada reverse engering in of it's self is not illgeal. In the USA it may break some parts of the DMCA but that still is not likey to get you in jail.

3. This one might be ture in some cases but pissing peoleop off is not automaticly immoral. Finding a security expolite in somthing and reporting it might piss some one off but it also saves alot of end users. Also reverse engering hardware to make drivers for linux or adbended ware is not likey to piss any one off.

Quote:

yes but expose their source code to the general public?

You are not exposing there source code to any one if you reverse engeinr somthing, tho you might be eposing there protocols and algorthins (tho not coded in the same way). It's not noramly posble to decomplie things to any ware close to there source code.


In summary, like all technogly it's neither right or wrong but in how it's used.