Reverse Engineering

[alexross1977]

a Few questions please ladies and gents.

1- Reverse-Engineering - Legal in UK? illegal to reverse-eng someone elses' proprietary code perhaps?

2- Given the recent spate of bugs that we all know for the 500jp "random" machines - maybe it is time to start RE'ing the embedded software running inside the cabinets [not the Game code]...

3- Is anyone who reads here in a position to supply roms etc from recent/new machines (only if this is 100% legal of course)?

4- I have heard an encryption argument, but no doubt instructions could be sniffed directly from the hardware if such encryption would disallow simple [direct] disassembly of chip instructions.

My thoughts are that someone or a bunch of someones are no-doubt involved in all of the above - it is a lucrative business after-all.

no doubt one could circumvent the laws here by getting the RA'ing done outside the United Kingdom (some good cheap coders are popping up in India for example!...)

Thoughts? Comments?
anything exciting - you can always pm.

regards
alex

p.s. Brrrrr. pretty chilly today innit!

[Scott]

Reverse engineering is illegal now isnt it due to the newish EUCD (google it)..

But who cares if its illegal anyway not like you are going to be doing it to circumvent copy right protection anyway.

As for getting the roms.. even if you do get them how do you intend to 'debud' them without an emulator.. all your gonna get is a load of compiled code which you cant do a whole lot with.

Youd idealy need a) An emulator 2) The source code or 3) a working debuger for MPU5 or whatever relevent hardware

Id imagine you could just get the roms from a machine pretty easily now though.. all the newer ones seem to have USB if not serial port inside for easy reading of data and reflashing.

[John Holmes' Stunt C**K]

Interesting one regarding re-engineering.

I did a module for my uni degree last year on copyright and protection, i've just dug out my notes, and come across this:


- Lawful use of a program allows you too see how it works (cdpa296)

Now the problem you will likely have is that to have lawful use of a program you need to own the machine

CDPA296 is backed up by:

Article 5(3) of 91/250/EEC is,

The person having a right to use a copy of a computer
program shall be entitled, without the authorization
of the rightholder, to observe, study or test the
functioning of the program in order to determine the
ideas and principles which underlie any element of the
program if he does so while performing any of the acts
of loading, displaying, running, transmitting or
storing the program which he is entitled to do.

-- that is, it creates a general right to reverse-engineer
a computer program if you have the right to use it.
Article 6 states that you can decompile a program if you
have the right to use it AND you are doing so to produce
an interoperable program AND you have no other way to
obtain the information AND you only decompile the parts of
the program you need to produce that interoperable
program.

I'm guessing your end aim of the process is whether you can find bugs in the software yourself, and hence empty the machine before others find it?!

In theory, I can't see why not, however in practice i'm sure it is not as simple
Regarding the legality of the the whole thing, as long as you don't broadcast your findings to the nation, i'm sure you'll be fine

[Justanewone]

Cashino seems to be a PC disguised as a Fruit machine, decompile the code (which in C I guess) and you might be onto something, even get a copy I think it actually runs on a 166MHz Pentium.

Dave