4 ms·

I reverse engineered a motherboard

107 points by mmastrac 10y ago

inetknght 10y ago
What I got from this is that I need to check out RWEverything and x64dbg... the former looks neat and the latter which looks a lot like a modern OllyDbg. Congrats accomplishing what you wanted to.
- nuclx 10y ago
  Oh yeah OllyDbg, such a versatile RE tool at the time. SoftICE was nice and all, but OllyDbg was definitely an evolution when it comes to user-mode debugging.
- Cerium 10y ago
  I recently did some reverse engineering with x64dbg. Amazing experience. It has code flow graphing like ida, has selection decompilation, and a bunch of other features.
dewyatt 10y ago
Seems like a misleading headline. He reverse-engineered some software to control some LEDs on his motherboard, I guess. From the title, I thought he would be dumping the schematics+firmware+etc of a motherboard, which would be pretty interesting.
- AdamJacobMuller 10y ago
  I agree the headline is misleading, but its a cool writeup nonetheless.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  That's what I came for. Oh well. Suggest title change to "I reverse engineered firmware for motherboard LED's."
kogepathic 10y ago
> Turns out the motherboard uses a proprietary Super I/O chip: Nuvoton NCT6795D! ... This chip is apparently made exclusively for MSI and MSI refuses to provide the specsheets for the chip This is why exclusivity agreements suck for the user. It means the vendor gets to claim they can't release details of something for competitive reasons. I'm glad OP was able to reverse engineer the driver to control the RGB LEDs. Now if only motherboard manufacturers would offer a cheaper board without an LED driver that most people don't care about...
poizan42 10y ago
> Could I debug a driver in a live system? Turns out it is possible, but not without a second computer with a serial header. You can do kernel debugging over ethernet: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh439346(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh...

107 points by mmastrac 10y ago

What I got from this is that I need to check out RWEverything and x64dbg... the former looks neat and the latter which looks a lot like a modern OllyDbg. Congrats accomplishing what you wanted to.

nuclx 10y ago
Oh yeah OllyDbg, such a versatile RE tool at the time. SoftICE was nice and all, but OllyDbg was definitely an evolution when it comes to user-mode debugging.
Cerium 10y ago
I recently did some reverse engineering with x64dbg. Amazing experience. It has code flow graphing like ida, has selection decompilation, and a bunch of other features.

dewyatt 10y ago

Seems like a misleading headline. He reverse-engineered some software to control some LEDs on his motherboard, I guess. From the title, I thought he would be dumping the schematics+firmware+etc of a motherboard, which would be pretty interesting.

AdamJacobMuller 10y ago
I agree the headline is misleading, but its a cool writeup nonetheless.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
That's what I came for. Oh well. Suggest title change to "I reverse engineered firmware for motherboard LED's."

kogepathic 10y ago

> Turns out the motherboard uses a proprietary Super I/O chip: Nuvoton NCT6795D! ... This chip is apparently made exclusively for MSI and MSI refuses to provide the specsheets for the chip This is why exclusivity agreements suck for the user. It means the vendor gets to claim they can't release details of something for competitive reasons. I'm glad OP was able to reverse engineer the driver to control the RGB LEDs. Now if only motherboard manufacturers would offer a cheaper board without an LED driver that most people don't care about...

poizan42 10y ago

> Could I debug a driver in a live system? Turns out it is possible, but not without a second computer with a serial header. You can do kernel debugging over ethernet: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh439346(v=vs.85).aspx https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/hh...