4 ms·

The gray hat and black hat approaches are actually fairly profitable in the automotive industry and could probably sell well in the farm industry too. Gray-hat

by bri3d 12y ago

The gray hat and black hat approaches are actually fairly profitable in the automotive industry and could probably sell well in the farm industry too. Gray-hat reverse-engineered tools like Durametric for Porsche and VAG-COM for VW sell with moderate degrees of success into the enthusiast and independent service shop market (where $800 for a Durametric with 40% of the capability is a lot more appealing than $14,000 + service plan for a PIWIS). The black-hat approach seemingly can be profitable (like all black-hat pursuits, depending on your moral beliefs) as well: various Chinese manufacturers make enough money selling knockoff Mercedes diagnostic "multiplexers" on eBay to make it worth their while to produce them. There are a ton of value-add products you can sell once you've reverse engineered a control system, too, like custom tuning and add-ons unavailable from the manufacturer.

logfromblammo 12y ago
...with the associated legal risk. If you start making too much money, you need to carefully structure your company to be raid-proof and judgment-proof. Make daily off-site, offshore backups. Don't ever do sales and manufacturing in the same country. Put your supply chain in a different business structure than your customer management, which is likewise separate from your reverse engineering operation. Use strawman purchasers to acquire your OEM hardware for analysis. All that represents overhead costs. If you don't pay them, your company could potentially be eaten by lawyers. Only white-hats can sleep soundly at night. (They would be naive to do so, but they do have that option.) They are also the only ones able to accept an over-the-table buyout offer. That said, the grey-hat route is probably the most fun, and likely to attract people from the "because its there" crowd. Judging from the jailbreakers in the console and mobile markets, they might just do it just to kick a multinational in the nuts and run away, laughing.

by bri3d 12y ago

logfromblammo 12y ago

...with the associated legal risk. If you start making too much money, you need to carefully structure your company to be raid-proof and judgment-proof. Make daily off-site, offshore backups. Don't ever do sales and manufacturing in the same country. Put your supply chain in a different business structure than your customer management, which is likewise separate from your reverse engineering operation. Use strawman purchasers to acquire your OEM hardware for analysis. All that represents overhead costs. If you don't pay them, your company could potentially be eaten by lawyers. Only white-hats can sleep soundly at night. (They would be naive to do so, but they do have that option.) They are also the only ones able to accept an over-the-table buyout offer. That said, the grey-hat route is probably the most fun, and likely to attract people from the "because its there" crowd. Judging from the jailbreakers in the console and mobile markets, they might just do it just to kick a multinational in the nuts and run away, laughing.