The first programs were written in binary/hexadecimal, and only later did we invent coding languages to convert between human readable code and binary machine code.
So why can’t we just do the same thing in reverse? I hear a lot about devices from audio streaming to footware rendered useless by abandonware. Couldn’t a very smart person (or AI) just take the existing program and turn it into code?
It is not. idk who told you it was.
Disassembling an executable is trivial to do. Everything is open source if you can read assembly. Obfuscation be damned.
Well decompiling is only one step in the reverse engineering process. I would recommend taking a look at the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time decompile projects. They reversed engineered the whole thing, which took years and was a team effort.
In the end they got perfectly readable source code, fully documented. And the most amazing thing is, when compiled with the right compiler and right flags, it recreates the original rom perfectly.
I would also recommend a YouTuber called Kaze. He’s been working on Mario 64 for years, re-writing large parts of the engine to get some pretty cool stuff going.
The hard part isn’t reading assembly. The hard part is figuring out why it’s doing what it’s doing with no comments or function names or anything useful to help.
This is like saying if you can read English you can understand an advanced math or physics paper written in English without having any knowledge or context of those subjects.
Imagine being presented with an aircraft. You bloody well know what it does and you get permission to disassemble the whole thing to your heart’s content. How big of a task do you think it’d still be to be able to work out how the winged metal tube works and why it does what it does when it does it?
Exactly.
