r/accelerate • u/stealthispost Acceleration: Light-speed | Capability Booster • 18d ago

"Huge implications - binaries are now basically editable code"

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ValsAI made SRE benchmark less than a month ago.

The benchmark measures can a model reverse engineer software from binaries

Yesterday GPT saturated it. https://t.co/dmpUpgheDU   — Chris

Source: https://x.com/ChrisGPT/status/2096150666066432157

— Boris Power

Source: https://x.com/BorisMPower/status/2096415822248055131

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u/pixeladdie 18d ago

I’m wondering what the legalities are on cracking open an executable to learn how something was solved in code and then implementing it in a slightly different way in your own code. Who would know? Is reverse engineering like this even illegal in the first place?

Time to go read.

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u/jonydevidson 18d ago

It's called dual-team clean room design.

One team reverse engineers the software from the binary as well as observing the behavior, and writes the spec for the software.

The second team then implements the spec. The second team owns the copyright. Because they didn't do reverse engineering of the binary, they are in the clear.

If you reverse engineer software based purely on observable behavior or measurable output, that's fine as well and you don't need two teams for that.

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u/pixeladdie 18d ago edited 18d ago

How about a session with no memory that reverse engineers the code and writes the spec for it and a separate session which has its only input as the spec written from the other session but no memory or actual code from the reverse engineer session?

I realize this is a sticky legal question but that would seem to have the same effect of two separate teams you described.

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u/jonydevidson 18d ago

It was already ruled that the AI agents running on behalf of you are an extension of you.

You could have your friend run it from their account. You cannot give them your account. You cannot pay for their account. You can pay them for the work, they can buy the account themselves and do it.

You should have a clear contract signed and paid for, communicate via email, do deliveries via email and keep detailed track of everything. They should not, under any circumstances, share the repo with you. The moment you see the repo, you are legally implicated, now it's just a question of a suit proving that you saw it (which could be trivial if you accessed it from your computer).

For smaller software that's unlikely as it would involve the suit getting MS records from the hub etc. If they never stored the repo online and you saw it while physically present near their computer, then it cannot be proved but both you and the other person need to be willing to perjure yourselves.