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I loved this book as a kid: http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Eilam/dp/0764574817 http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-El

I loved this book as a kid: http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Eilam/dp/0764574817 http://www.amazon.com/Reversing-Secrets-Engineering-Eldad-Ei... It's probably a bit out of date now, but my dog-eared copy is still a good read. Ah, nostalgia. There once were days when I dreamed that a CS degree would make me as a god; the silly thoughts of a child. Now I know that it is a _PhD_ which makes gods of men.

lowglow 16y ago
Can I get a Reverse Engineering PhD?
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  You can study molecular biology and become an expert at reverse-engineering the most amazing machines in existence. Though the Kinect is apparently a lot more tractable.
  - vault_ 16y ago
    I've been writing some code for people working in bioinformatics recently. It's pretty similar.
- bigmac 16y ago
  I've looked into this a bit. There are three programs that I'm aware of: The BitBlaze project at UC Berkeley. http://bitblaze.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://bitblaze.cs.berkeley.edu/ There's also http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/amk/ http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/amk/ which offers a PhD studentship in "Reverse Engineering for Security." CERIAS at Purdue will definitely have some RE related courses, e.g. http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/projects/detail/malware_reverse_engineering_code_analysis_development/ http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/projects/detail/malware_re...
mechanical_fish 16y ago
Now I know that it is a _PhD_ which makes gods of men. I know you're joking, but... When I was halfway through my Ph.D. I formulated a hypothesis: The proximate challenge that keeps you from graduating is that you have to write a thesis. But the ultimate challenge to getting your Ph.D. is this: You somehow have to learn to understand, deep down, that all your romantic notions about the Ph.D. are bunk, that you will be exactly the same person on the day after you get it that you were the day before, and that you need to stop waiting for the day when you feel like a god and just write something down and get on with life. It may take you years to accept this, and it may drive you to drink, but after you get to that point you can graduate. Only then will you be able to live with the fact that your thesis looks like crap to you. Your thesis will always look like crap to you. Either you will have figured out absolutely everything and your thesis will look incredibly boring to you, because you've moved on, or -- vastly more likely -- your thesis will look woefully incomplete because, geez, there is so much that you couldn't figure out, and you're just so stupid! Or, most likely of all, you will think both of these things at the same time. Similarly: Being the world's foremost expert on a particular scientific problem is a lot less exciting in real life than it seems in the movies. In fact, being on the frontier of science feels like being totally, hopelessly lost and confused. Why this came as a surprise to me I'll never know.
- bricestacey 16y ago
  The hopelessness and confusion that comes at the frontier of science is precisely why I stopped studying biochemistry for my bachelors degree. By the first 300 level course, people begin to start asking relatively simple questions that are not yet known to mankind. It freaked me out. I couldn't imagine ever discovering new knowledge and subsequently dropped out and into computer science...
  - troutwine 16y ago
    Ah, but the spice of life is staring into the Abyss of Unknowing and recognizing your very self in it! The most beautiful questions of mathematics and computer science so very often start out "Does there exist..." and we are left with no answer other than, "Who knows!" The world is wide and strange and we are very small indeed. That is beautiful to me.

lowglow 16y ago

Can I get a Reverse Engineering PhD?

mechanical_fish 16y ago
You can study molecular biology and become an expert at reverse-engineering the most amazing machines in existence. Though the Kinect is apparently a lot more tractable.
- vault_ 16y ago
  I've been writing some code for people working in bioinformatics recently. It's pretty similar.
bigmac 16y ago
I've looked into this a bit. There are three programs that I'm aware of: The BitBlaze project at UC Berkeley. http://bitblaze.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://bitblaze.cs.berkeley.edu/ There's also http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/amk/ http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/amk/ which offers a PhD studentship in "Reverse Engineering for Security." CERIAS at Purdue will definitely have some RE related courses, e.g. http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/projects/detail/malware_reverse_engineering_code_analysis_development/ http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/projects/detail/malware_re...

mechanical_fish 16y ago

Now I know that it is a _PhD_ which makes gods of men. I know you're joking, but... When I was halfway through my Ph.D. I formulated a hypothesis: The proximate challenge that keeps you from graduating is that you have to write a thesis. But the ultimate challenge to getting your Ph.D. is this: You somehow have to learn to understand, deep down, that all your romantic notions about the Ph.D. are bunk, that you will be exactly the same person on the day after you get it that you were the day before, and that you need to stop waiting for the day when you feel like a god and just write something down and get on with life. It may take you years to accept this, and it may drive you to drink, but after you get to that point you can graduate. Only then will you be able to live with the fact that your thesis looks like crap to you. Your thesis will always look like crap to you. Either you will have figured out absolutely everything and your thesis will look incredibly boring to you, because you've moved on, or -- vastly more likely -- your thesis will look woefully incomplete because, geez, there is so much that you couldn't figure out, and you're just so stupid! Or, most likely of all, you will think both of these things at the same time. Similarly: Being the world's foremost expert on a particular scientific problem is a lot less exciting in real life than it seems in the movies. In fact, being on the frontier of science feels like being totally, hopelessly lost and confused. Why this came as a surprise to me I'll never know.

bricestacey 16y ago
The hopelessness and confusion that comes at the frontier of science is precisely why I stopped studying biochemistry for my bachelors degree. By the first 300 level course, people begin to start asking relatively simple questions that are not yet known to mankind. It freaked me out. I couldn't imagine ever discovering new knowledge and subsequently dropped out and into computer science...
- troutwine 16y ago
  Ah, but the spice of life is staring into the Abyss of Unknowing and recognizing your very self in it! The most beautiful questions of mathematics and computer science so very often start out "Does there exist..." and we are left with no answer other than, "Who knows!" The world is wide and strange and we are very small indeed. That is beautiful to me.