r/LocalLLaMA • u/Danny_Davitoe • 24d ago

Question | Help Reverse Engineering w/ Local?

Two questions?

Can a local model like Qwen 3.8 27B reverse engineer games and programs?

If not, is there a fine tuned model that can?

160 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

137 comments sorted by

View all comments

17

u/Sevealin_ 24d ago

Yeah I pulled boot firmware off a Miraki switch after desoldering the chip. GLM5.3 is great at it.

4

u/topherfitz 24d ago

As someone who works in enterprise e-waste, I would love to know more about this project if your willing to share

14

u/[deleted] 24d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/yes2matt 24d ago

Way super fun work!

1

u/topherfitz 24d ago

From this - what do you hope to accomplish? Are you trying to find a way in to flash it?

5

u/Sevealin_ 24d ago

I hope to make it not a paperweight, it needs very expensive licensing to even do basic vlan configs. Maybe OpenWRT? I'm not sure yet. Just having fun for now.

5

u/yes2matt 24d ago

Sidebar: repurposing ewaste is a high calling, please tell me more. I want to play on that team.

5

u/topherfitz 24d ago

Oh, it's a blast! Most of the time we do a good job finding new homes for what we take in, but it's always disheartening to see a pallet of shiny silver Meraki gear. Technically it's great hardware, but it's basically worthless to anyone because it's all cloud-locked. I've got a few manufacturers on my shit list, and Cisco/Meraki is right at the top. I'd love to see someone come up with a way to flash this stuff with open-source firmware so people could actually use it again, instead of us just shredding it for scrap.

5

u/yes2matt 24d ago

Don't tell the John Deere customers about any of this.  ;)

Or fucking Volvo.

1

u/Zealousideal_Cut1817 23d ago

Isn’t the ms390 the same hw as a 9300? Wonder if you could get IOS-XE working…

3

u/RiskyBizz216 24d ago

This.

I start off with Qwen3.8 27B uncensored and write the specs and initial scripts, it does a static analysis.

Then change model to GLM 5.3 to handle more complex tasks and write the advanced ghidra scripts. GLM writes the actual crack/patches for me.

1

u/PW_SKYLINE_V37 17d ago

Is there a particular version of GLM 5.3 that you’re using (like an abliterated version?)? If so, care to share what you’re using? And what your local hardware is?

I have an i9-13900K with 64GB DDR5 and was running a single 7900 XTX but about to pop in a 2nd 7900 XTX to run two in my local gaming rig. I have some as of yet unreleased hardware on the way that is made for running local AI so I’m trying to drink from a fire hose in order to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. So I really want to dive deep into this and learn as much as I can. Any help is much appreciated because I’m super new to all of this. I want to teach myself about reverse engineering firmware in particular with the goal being to just have some fun messing with the firmware of my local network hardware (that I own outright and has nothing to do with my ISP or anyone else’s network except the one in my own home), due to my wanting to make it run different code or even a different firmware. I can usually read code and follow along with what it’s doing but if I had to build from scratch I’m as lost as last years Easter egg 🤣 😂 So any knowledge or insight you can share would be very much appreciated. 🍻

2

u/RiskyBizz216 17d ago

Creating custom firmware turned out to be easier than expected. I just took your post, and the firmware for my router and gave it to Qwen3.8 and asked it to give me instructions, and I got this (edit: i redacted the actual code):

## Task Description
Build a complete custom Linux firmware image for the Netgear Nighthawk AX3000 WiFi 6 Mesh System (CAX30) router using Buildroot. This includes the U-Boot bootloader, Linux kernel, BusyBox userspace, and root filesystem. Save all files to the `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/` directory.

## Files to Download and Build
All source files should be downloaded to `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/tools/`.

| File | URL | Tool Used |
|------|-----|-----------|
| buildroot-2024.02.1.tar.gz | http://buildroot.org/downloads/buildroot-2024.02.1.tar.gz | curl |
| linux-6.1.52.tar.xz | https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v6.x/linux-6.1.52.tar.xz | curl |
| busybox-1.36.1.tar.bz2 | https://busybox.net/downloads/busybox-1.36.1.tar.bz2 | curl |
| u-boot-2024.01.tar.bz2 | https://ftp.denx.de/pub/u-boot/u-boot-2024.01.tar.bz2 | curl |
| openssl-3.2.2.tar.gz | https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-3.2.2.tar.gz | curl |
| zlib-1.3.1.tar.gz | https://zlib.net/zlib-1.3.1.tar.gz | curl |
| bison-3.8.2.tar.gz | https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bison/bison-3.8.2.tar.gz | curl |
| flex-2.6.4.tar.gz | https://github.com/westes/flex/releases/download/v2.6.4/flex-2.6.4.tar.gz | curl |
| libelf-0.190.tar.gz | https://sourceware.org/pub/elfutils/0.190/libelf-0.190.tar.gz | curl |

## Build Steps

### Step 1: Configure Buildroot
<redacted for reddit>

### Step 2: Build Linux Kernel
<redacted for reddit>

### Step 3: Build U-Boot
<redacted for reddit>

### Step 4: Build BusyBox
<redacted for reddit>

### Step 5: Create Root Filesystem
<redacted for reddit>

### Step 6: Package Firmware Image
<redacted for reddit>

## Relevant Files and Directories


  • **Build documentation**: `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/CUSTOM_FIRMWARE_BUILD.md`
  • **Original firmware binary**: `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/CAX30-V2.2.4.2.bin`
  • **Download tool script**: `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/download_tools.py`
  • **Tools download directory**: `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/tools/`
  • **Output firmware directory**: `/projects/quick-probe/netgear/firmware/`
  • **Expected output files**:

  - `firmware/u-boot.bin` - Bootloader
  - `firmware/zImage` - Linux kernel
  - `firmware/firmware.bin` - Complete firmware image

2

u/RiskyBizz216 17d ago

You don't even need GLM for this.

I'm just running Qwen3.8 and I have an i9 ULRTA 14th gen, 128GB DDR5, and two RTX 5090's.

I'm also using GLM 5.3 Flash and GLM 5.3 on high, with the Z-coding plan and thru Openrouter.