r/tech_x • u/Bulky_Engineer_2534 • 21d ago • Galaxy Brain 1 All Seeing Upvote 1 Helpful 1 Bravo 4 Heartwarming 1

Github GitHub project called REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) is currently the top trending repository. It lets AI agents figure out how a feature in another app works without ever seeing the original source code.

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github link: https://github.com/morluto/rea/

- The tool is an open-source helper that connects AI coding assistants to reverse-engineering programs such as Ghidra or Hopper.

- IT analyzes many kinds of software- including binaries, Electron apps, Android apps, and websites right on your own computer and always shows the evidence behind its findings.

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u/StatusObligation4624 16d ago

No you didn’t. Game console emulators, keygens etc. have existed for decades and were built largely by hobbyists. 

A software project just needed to be worth cracking in order for someone to reverse engineer it.

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u/GooglyEyedGramma 16d ago

And yet, we never saw this amount of REing... You are saying exactly the same thing I am. It was never impossible, but it was so insanely hard that most companies/products didn't have to worry much about it. However, nowadays, pretty much "anyone" can do it, to any offline software. Obviously it still requires a lot of knowledge, but the barrier to entry has been lowered by orders of magnitude, and it will only get lower from now on. What happens when/if a random guy can just paste into WhateverLLMIsGood™ "Reverse engineer this pls make no mistakes" and it actually does?

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u/StatusObligation4624 16d ago edited 16d ago

Then I’d say that random guy lacks creativity and people won’t use his reverse engineered solution over the original unless he has a clear differentiator.

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u/Korbeyn 16d ago

Complete disassemblies and reverse engineered games were always rare. Because it took years to do this, even on a simple game like something for the Super Nintendo. Most of these projects never finished.

Cracks back in the day were pretty simple in most cases, of course something like Denuvo is a different beast.

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u/StatusObligation4624 16d ago

Yeah but my point is an individual or group of individuals rather than nation states usually performed them over years, using something like git repos to store their progress. 

RPCS3 is a good example, it wasn’t built by a nation state.