Software Reverse Engineering for Debugging

Software Reverse Engineering has been there ever since software are being made. Software Reverse Engineering is a skill by which software can be reverted back to their basic form through a series of steps. Reverting back to the basic form means that a software is taken back to the source code level, when it was developed. Sometimes it is impossible for a software to be brought back right down to its source code.

Pretty often, software are not totally brought down to the source code level or simply cannot be, but they are brought down till the assembly language level. Assembly Language is a CPU understandable language which is different for different CPU architectures. Explaining assembly language would certainly be out of the scope of this article, let it be a topic for discussion some other time. In short I can say that assembly language is a low level language and obviously extremely difficult to understand just by reading it.

An apparent question arises that if a software is reverse engineered to the assembly level which is difficult to understand then what is the use of the assembly language. Assembly language has certain instructions known as assembly codes which define the flow of a program, the program structure, functions, etc. Everything that the software is capable of doing can be modified or deleted using these codes. This is where we talk about debugging and how reverse engineering can help debugging. Debugging is finding bugs in our software and correcting them as necessary.

Debugging is most often done at development phase which means when the software is being coded or developed but sometimes some bugs and errors cannot be corrected at development phase. Some of these bugs can be however identified and corrected when the concerned program is small in its source code but it becomes extremely difficult to correct bugs when the program is huge and complex. Reverse engineering can help programmers build better software by eliminating bugs by just understanding the techniques, procedures and tools of reverse engineering.

Software Reverse Engineering is not just about the bugs but the entire aspect of developing software absolutely crisp and perfect as also extensible in the future. Extensibility with the use of reverse engineering is also a major advantage of reverse engineering, like we generally see patches being released by software companies for a security exploit or lack of required feature. Software Reverse Engineering is extremely useful if it is done ethically and legally but this is not what happens generally.

Today many crackers are born on the information highway lanes who use technology to exploit and misuse technology. Crackers are people who Reverse Engineer software not for the purpose of debugging but rather for breaking into it. They use Reverse Engineering tools and techniques to break authentication security mechanisms. By breaking these security mechanisms crackers steal passwords and patch software illegally which they can automate by creating cracks. Cracks are small utility programs which are distributed across the Internet and Emails, which help other people break security mechanisms of software with just a click of button and without any reverse engineering knowledge as well.

Whatever misuse software reverse engineering has caused and continues to cause, but it is here to stay, to help and to build better software. As the old saying goes, "What's good, is going to be broken!", the only way out of the misuse of Reverse Engineering is to "outwit the cracker."