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It's not too bad if the device uses USB and you have a working Windows driver for it: run Windows in a virtual machine on Linux, pass the USB device through to
by pmjordan 14y ago
It's not too bad if the device uses USB and you have a working Windows driver for it: run Windows in a virtual machine on Linux, pass the USB device through to it and log the traffic using Linux' USB debug facility. Then figure out what that traffic means. It depends on the device how difficult this is, but for simpler devices it's actually quite straightforward.
For other types of devices or if you don't have ANY driver, it's obviously somewhat trickier, as most I/O protocols are a lot lower level than USB (the host controller driver takes care of most of the heavy lifting for USB). I suspect you'll need specialist debug hardware to log the generated traffic.
- shurane 14y agoWhat do you mean by 'specialist debug hardware'?
- pmjordan 14y agoBasically, one of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_analyzer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_analyzer
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ChuckMcM 14y agoUSB is pretty easy in that regard, you can do the same with a PCI bus analyzer but they are a bit more expensive. However, and I'm sure you are aware, doing so is expressly forbidden by the DMCA under the 'reverse engineering' clause. Not many folks have been pursued by this in the driver space but you need only see how nutso Microsoft went over people 'reverse engineering' Kinect to see how it goes down.
- schoen 14y agoThe "reverse engineering" clause of the DMCA protects reverse engineering, rather than forbidding it. Take a look at 17 USC §1201(f) (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201#f http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201#f). The DMCA only applies in the first place if a "technological measure" "in the ordinary course of its operation" "effectively controls access to a work", which needn't always be the case for reverse engineering. The idea that the DMCA expressly forbids reverse engineering is a misconception. Microsoft eventually changed its position on Kinect and never filed a lawsuit over the reverse engineering. So, we don't have a court decision suggesting that there was anything legally improper in any way about the Kinect reverse engineering. Hackers should be upset about §1201 and speak out against it, but not be gratuitously scared off from doing things!