Is it okay to reverse engineer?

In 1990, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) defined (software) reverse engineering (SRE) as “the process of analyzing a subject system to identify the system’s components and their interrelationships and to create representations of the system in another form or at a higher level of …

Is reverse engineering a crime?

Reverse engineering (process) is so much more than reverse engineering (application). Infringing on another’s intellectual property is a criminal act. Reverse engineering (RE) is a tool to capture a physical form and convert the information into a 3D, digital representation.

Is it legal to reverse engineer a program?

That depends on the license of the program you want to reverse engineer. Anything with a GPL or another open source license can easily be reverse engineered (especially since they must provide the source). Closed source products rarely if ever allow reverse engineering. Originally Answered: In Computer Programming is reverse engineering legal?

What is a reverse engineer in Computer Science?

Reverse engineering is discovering trade secret information through investigation of the products incorporating the trade secret. One of the very first computer jobs I had (in the mid 70’s) was helping reverse engineer heating and cooling systems.

Can reverse engineering of software infringe copyright?

Copyright law protects software from both direct copying and close paraphrasing. Reverse engineering of software often involves reconstruction of code. A reconstruction may still infringe copyright by reproducing the key elements of the original software, even if it doesn’t reproduce the original code line-for-line.

Is it a crime to reverse engineer a prototype?

A prototype stolen from a lab, or software code snatched by hackers, is stolen property and subject to criminal as well as civil legal remedies. Many kinds of reverse engineering can be prevented—or at least effectively countered—through the use of contracts.