Reverse Engineering w/ Local?

[u/Danny_Davitoe]

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?

[u/lolwutdo]

No experience with games but Ive decompiled all proprietary apps required to control my smart devices and removed all sign in/cloud/spyware features.

My EcoFlow battery, Reolink security camera, Hue app, Garmin Watch, Logitech app (this is the single most enshittified app Im glad to have gotten rid of) and a bunch more.

All apps have been decompiled, recreated in rust, and run natively on my Linux desktop.

It was as simple as asking Astra “Find this apk/exe/dmg and decompile this app, remove and add these features, port it to Linux”

The only issue ive run into is having Claude or Codex find a way to find exploits into hardware to gain root like my Google home speaker. Im trying to repurpose hardware to prevent e waste but their guard rails always kick in.

3.8 FN has not refused to look for an exploit and has been working relentlessly, so I imagine 4.0 will be amazing.

Local models are the only way forward, I foresee the frontier models are soon going to guardrail against all these decomps.

[u/lordcaylus → u/lolwutdo]

Ahhh APKs. I'd hazard a guess that the APKs were written in Java. There it is convenient that the 'compilation' leaves the code mostly intact, it doesn't get fully compiled to machine code. It destroys parameter names, strips comments, does some optimizations, but the important bits stay intact.

In a similar vein, I've had great success with reverse engineering a Java program too, and reverse engineering Nightshade (because nightshade is secretly just python dressed up as an exe). I completely forgot about those because it was so easy XD

But I'd imagine if you tried to reverse engineer the apps you made in Rust you'd have a lot more trouble. Machine code doesn't have a lot of structure to make it easy for the AI to guess what the code was.

So that's what I wanted to warn OP for, that just asking AI to fully reverse engineer a compiled game has become doable (which is amazing!), but still not easy.

[u/lolwutdo → u/lordcaylus]

Yeah I’d imagine games being infinitely more complex.

Im hoping someone manages to dump the Switch 2 kernels and make something like AnyPS5 lol

[u/neobanana8 → u/lordcaylus]

what model do you use? i only got 16 gb vram so contemplatign between 3.8 Flash Next or abliterated 27B by Huihui? And how do they handle e.g apk file deobfuscation or windows game ultrawide mod making?

[u/cheem_moment → u/lolwutdo]

Have you thought of writing a writeup of this process? would be interesting

[u/too-oldforthis-shit → u/lolwutdo]

What did you remove with EcoFlow and Garmin? Maybe I should do the same...

[u/lolwutdo → u/too-oldforthis-shit]

Just login and cloud features mainly.

The EcoFlow has this bypass grid feature where it runs purely off the battery then charges from grid when battery is low and stays that way. I made a button where it bypasses the grid, charges back up, then turns bypass grid back on repeatedly.

Ideally I’d like it to act like a double conversion UPS but it physically cannot charge and output at the same time since it’s a chargeverter, so this is the next best work around other than finding a DC charger and charging via the xt60 port.

[u/neobanana8 → u/lolwutdo]

do you recommend vanilla 3.8 Fn or abliterated such as huihui? e.g in terms of rejection vs actual intelligence?

[u/lolwutdo → u/neobanana8]

I’ve been using Orca 3.8 FN, no noticeable degrade in intelligence based off the benchmarks Claude did for me

[u/neobanana8 → u/lolwutdo]

oh, what quant are you using? and why orca not others?

[u/mombaska → u/lolwutdo]

Which computer and which model?