how is reverse engineering used today?
813245
In aircraft structural repair, reverse engineering is used all the time.\n\nSince repair centers do not have access to aircraft design stress reports, engineers must 'reverse engineer' the existing structure to determine the maximum stress loads that the original design is capable of withstanding... and/or determine the load carrying capability lost due to the damage.\n\nOnce these loads are obtained (from reverse engineering), then a repair can be designed to restore loads lost from damage.
71479
This is not the place that you should be looking for serial numbers.  But, may I ask why are you trying to use such an old piece of software?
5545
WayBackMachine\nhttp://www.archive.org/web/web.php
112787
One limitation is legal.  If something is patented, they reveal how it is done in the patent, so no secret and reverse engineering is not needed.  With trade secrets reverse engineering is needed to find out how it works, but if you can figure it out, you are free to use it (or patent it).  Sometimes there is a mix of patented and trade secrets in the same product; then a procedure called the "cleanroom" approach is sometimes used.  For example, the original IBM PC BIOS was copyrighted by IBM, but other computer manufacturers wanted to make their own BIOS; how could they do that without violating IBM's copyright?  In the cleanroom approach a specification is written and given to engineers to create their own BIOS; the engineers are hired based on knowing nothing about the IBM BIOS and only work from the spec.  There is only one way to make specific procedure calls, so of course the engineers are forced use that common procedure.  But there are many flexible ways to organize memory, ASCII characters, etc., so the reverse engineers are not likely to write the code the same way as IBM did.  In this sense, the "cleanroom" code ("clean" meaning the engineers never saw the IBM code) is an original creative work created by the reverse engineers and they own the copyright (the work was not stolen).  It requires two teams of people however; the group writing the spec and the group doing the coding, so it is expensive.  The other legal limitation is when the license agreement stipulates that no reverse engineering is allowed: this means you are legally constrained from analyzing how the work was done (usually to protect their trade secret).  Still, I've known reverse engineers hired by lawyers to see if their competition is stealing their trade secrets or infringing on their patents (interesting job), so the 'limitation' here would be if you used the fruits of reverse engineering to commercialize someone else's copyrighted work or infringe on a patent.
450235
If you use a program called Ethereal, you might be able to trace it...never tried, but it does give you a lot of the behind the scenes stuff with the data communications over networks.
159988
If J2EE was as bad as you think it is, why is it so widely used? Answer: it's not.\n\nIt's been a very long time since this technology could be accused of being generally inefficient. JIT and adaptive in-time compilers can actually recompile byte-code into assembley during runtime depending on how it's currently being used. This can produce faster execution in certain cases than C or C++.\n\nMost of the pain comes from starting the runtime, in an enterprise environment this is not an issue.\n\nPS. Remember it's just a specification. If you want to do Java just like C# (ie. compiled and ready to go as a binary), take a look at http://gcc.gnu.org/java/
925175
The question is so broad its difficult to know where to start.\n\nDepending on the programming languages you are using, there are usually a multitude of Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) available. These help you organize and package your source codes. Some "languages" are more math and engineering oriented (like MathCAD and MATLAB.) There are also a number of Computer-Aided Design packages available.
772597
The software you are using is the key.  What are you using?
995086
Good Luck\n\nhttp://aresgalaxy.sourceforge.net/
984598
Search Google and SourceForge :)\n\nRawlyn.
1172060
You can ask atomic research agency. they are using this type of software.
465957
you cant directly modify an exe or dll files. Like someone said it is an end result once you have written the code and complied it. \n\nTo modify it you will have to reverse engineer the code using decompliers. Again this will not give you the full source code.\n\nHope this helps
271012
And why would you want to download a hacking tool?
1100369
Reverse engineering of alien technology. Where the heck do you think velcro actually came from??? Vulcan???
880967
Go to the library and get books or articles about "post-mortem" analysis (in business).  You might also look up "reverse engineering", though it's not exactly what you need, but the intellectual techniques might be similar and helpful.\n\nAlso, poke around at isixsigma.com - there's a forum there, and though there's a group of regulars who can be first-class pricks, you might get a good answer there.  Also some good links to articles there.
356009
First you need to disassemble the program. You can do this with Visual Studio. Then you can use a reverse disassembler to regenerate the source code. Reverse disassembly isn't perfect, and will most likely regenerate horrible code, and especially if it was compiled for one language (VB) and regenerated for another (C++). Best thing would be to learn assembly really well, but here's a link that talks about what you want to accomplish:
533926
The best way to protect .NET assemblies from prying eyes is to use a form of "obfuscation".  Because one of the features of .NET is to include metadata in the assembly itself, it does make it easy to "reverse engineer" the code to get a result similar to the original. (Local variables are a bit different, as their names are not stored in metadata, but tools, such as Lutz Roeder's reflector, will name them based on the type from which they are created.)\n\nObfuscators will replace (and in cases where it can be done) re-use symbols such that it is more difficult to understand the purpose of a class or its method names.  In some cases, they may throw an IL (Intermediate Language) instruction into the code that may thwart some of the disassemblers inasmuch to trick them into thinking that the assembly is invalid.\n\nThere are several obfuscators available to choose from, I was chosen to evaluate one and my selection was Demeanor for the features required.  However, I've provided links to all of them below so that you can evaluate them as well: