4 ms·

IDA Pro used to be one dude. Right now it's at least 3-4 people.

userbinator 11y ago
One Russian dude, to be precise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilfak_Guilfanov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilfak_Guilfanov I don't know if it's just perception bias or something cultural, but I seem to hear a lot more about famous/advanced Russian reverse-engineers than anywhere else.
- dogma1138 11y ago
  Most likely out of necessity due to the cold war than anything else. When you couldn't import software or hardware really from the west (not that the government would want too) you had to reverse engineer pretty much everything and make it on your own. North Korea used to be quite good in reverse engineering also, now all they do is pretty much hack it the easy way by reskining OSS. Availability was always a big driving force behind many RE efforts, allot of the good reverse engineering examples from the west (EU/US) that you can see especially in the 80's/90's were all about reversing Japanese games and game consoles (including arcade machines), some of them took 10-20 years to break especially those with the more advanced CAPCOM DRM modules.
- SXX 11y ago
  I think there is a lot of reverse-engineers from CIS you know about it's because once USSR disappear there was a lot of freedom (many would call it anarchy) in copyright area and very limited pressure on illegal activity in internet in general. Basically anyone who had PC and interest in reverse engineering may do almost anything without consequences. There was a lot of people that did it all publicly without really hiding their identity or even making business off it (like well-known DRM-removal tools). If you would try to do anything like that in western would you'll end up in prison soon. Also reverse engineering isn't some independent area, but it's usually linked with black hat security, virus making, carding, SEO, etc. There was a lot of CIS-based illegal and gray area communities and services that only may exist because lack of government control and many still exist. So it's was as well one of ways to make a lot of (illegal) money, but at some point any person grow up, get married (and make a child) and don't want to take criminal risks. Many of them want move to EU/US where risks are higher. Here you go where huge part of experts has come from.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    Not from Russia, but I imagine it was a similar situation over the border: another part is that you literally could not buy original versions due to lack of distributors / internet / easy connectivity. Or if you found a way, a typical game would cost you half the family spending budget for a month. So it's not always due to only lax copyright enforcement, but simply because cracking software was close to the only way to use it.

One Russian dude, to be precise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilfak_Guilfanov https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilfak_Guilfanov I don't know if it's just perception bias or something cultural, but I seem to hear a lot more about famous/advanced Russian reverse-engineers than anywhere else.

dogma1138 11y ago
Most likely out of necessity due to the cold war than anything else. When you couldn't import software or hardware really from the west (not that the government would want too) you had to reverse engineer pretty much everything and make it on your own. North Korea used to be quite good in reverse engineering also, now all they do is pretty much hack it the easy way by reskining OSS. Availability was always a big driving force behind many RE efforts, allot of the good reverse engineering examples from the west (EU/US) that you can see especially in the 80's/90's were all about reversing Japanese games and game consoles (including arcade machines), some of them took 10-20 years to break especially those with the more advanced CAPCOM DRM modules.
SXX 11y ago
I think there is a lot of reverse-engineers from CIS you know about it's because once USSR disappear there was a lot of freedom (many would call it anarchy) in copyright area and very limited pressure on illegal activity in internet in general. Basically anyone who had PC and interest in reverse engineering may do almost anything without consequences. There was a lot of people that did it all publicly without really hiding their identity or even making business off it (like well-known DRM-removal tools). If you would try to do anything like that in western would you'll end up in prison soon. Also reverse engineering isn't some independent area, but it's usually linked with black hat security, virus making, carding, SEO, etc. There was a lot of CIS-based illegal and gray area communities and services that only may exist because lack of government control and many still exist. So it's was as well one of ways to make a lot of (illegal) money, but at some point any person grow up, get married (and make a child) and don't want to take criminal risks. Many of them want move to EU/US where risks are higher. Here you go where huge part of experts has come from.
- viraptor 11y ago
  Not from Russia, but I imagine it was a similar situation over the border: another part is that you literally could not buy original versions due to lack of distributors / internet / easy connectivity. Or if you found a way, a typical game would cost you half the family spending budget for a month. So it's not always due to only lax copyright enforcement, but simply because cracking software was close to the only way to use it.