- “Hi Prof, Sorry for Late Reply—My Smart Fridge Locked Me Out (Assignment Attached)”

- “URGENT: PhD Student Accidentally Achieved Sentience (Needs Committee Approval)”

- “Question About Homework 3 (Submitted by My AI Twin, Is That Okay?)”

- “Re: Firmware Update Bricked Entire Smart Campus — Students Request Deadline Extension”

- “Grant Review Feedback: ‘Too Secure for Real-World Deployment’”

- “Can I Get Partial Credit? My IoT Implant Was Flagged as Malware”

- “Reminder: Mandatory Annual Ethics Training for Autonomous Systems (40 minutes)”

I have been playing with disassemblers/decompilers like IDA and ghidra in the past years and I have noticed that I have become quite good in reverse engineering old software from the 80s and early 90s on various platforms. By reverse engineering, I mean turning binaries into readable and maintainable source code in a high-level language, even if they use complex datastructures or perform complex computations (i.e. not just some 8-bit games).

Is that a skill still sought after in the industry? Or have all companies moved on (apart from some retro-computing enthusiast), rewritten their old programs and firmware for which they couldn't find the source code anymore, and I am twenty years too late?

Note that I am not looking for RE in cybersecurity (malware analysis etc.). That's something I am already doing occasionally, sometimes even for money :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24131596

Points: 1

# Comments: 0