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The App Hacker’s Playbook: How Reverse Engineering Actually Works
I’ve reverse engineered apps for about 20 years now, and I had mine reverse engineered, too. It’s a jungle out there, and as soon as your apps become modestly successful, people will try to disassemble them in all ways possible. Either to save license fees, or simply to leech off your hard work with a copycat. Trust me, I had all of that tried on me, both with my Android and my iOS apps. But how exactly is it done, and what can you do about it? Let’s go through the hacker’s playbook of reverse engineering.
Besides trying to steal someone’s app, there are also legit reasons to crack software open. Think about Internet of Things vendors that go out of business and leave you with non-functional firmware, and thus bricked devices. It’s morally legit to try to get your property back into a functional state. Legally, the situation may vary depending your jurisdiction. When we talk about cracking apps, it’s not always about ill intended reasons, but in reality it very often is. The main reasons why I analyze apps is to check for evil intentions in there, or a linked device doesn’t work as expected, or to assess the quality of the software before handing personal data over.
