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Reverse Engineering, the Legal Way

A free starter map through Awesome REA, the open catalogue of tools, case studies and papers for taking apart websites, apps, binaries, firmware and protocols. The rules first (what is fine and what is not in the EU and Germany), how the catalogue and its evidence classes work, where to start for each task, ten tools to begin with, an agent prompt, a four-week learning path, and two practice files we built to be broken: a binary with a hidden passphrase and a minified web bundle.

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What is inside
  • Rules first Own apps, CTFs, interoperability: fine. Cracking, DRM bypass, game cheats: not. EU and German law in plain words, not legal advice.
  • The catalogue Sections, evidence classes C0–C3, review dates, and why the repository index is only a list of leads.
  • Find by task Where to start for websites, Android, binaries, firmware, protocols and agents.
  • Ten tools Ghidra, Cutter, radare2, ImHex, jadx, Apktool, ILSpy, webcrack, mitmproxy and Wireshark, with official links.
  • practice/ A binary with a hidden passphrase and a minified bundle with discount codes, both ours, plus solutions.
  • Agent prompt Let Claude Code pick tools from the catalogue for your own project, and stop before it runs anything.

A Mac, Windows or Linux computer and a browser. For practice 1 a C compiler (Xcode command line tools or gcc) and Ghidra, Cutter or radare2 (all free). Only analyse software you own or may analyse. The guide is in English.

Fabian Faraz Farid · Imprint · Privacy