Reverse Engineering

The term reverse engineering originates from an older practice that involved dissembling physical objects. The term now mostly relates to computer software and hardware. In regard to software, reverse engineering is done to retrieve the source code of an application. This may occur if the source code was lost, to learn how the program performs certain functions, to improve the performance of the program, to correct an error in the source code, to detect malicious items in the program, or to make adaptations so that the program can be used with another application. There are many available tools that can be used to perform reverse engineering on a program. One such tool is known as a hexadecimal dumper, a utility that displays or prints the binary digits of a program in hexadecimal format. Reverse engineering may be considered a copyright violation when it comes to copying and duplicating programs. Because of this, the licensed use of some programs specifically prohibit reverse engineering.