Reverse Engineering!

Yesterday we started doing a process called "Reverse Engineering. I was totally unaware about this process, so googled and found lot of information about it.
Reverse engineering is the process of analyzing a subject system to create representations of the system at a higher level of abstraction. It can also be seen as "going backwards through the development cycle".In this model, the output of the implementation phase (in source code form) is reverse engineered back to the analysis phase, in an inversion of the traditional waterfall model. Reverse engineering is a process of examination only: the software system under consideration is not modified (which would make it reengineering). Software anti-tamper technology is used to deter both reverse engineering and reengineering of proprietary software and software-powered systems. In practice, two main types of reverse engineering emerge. In the first case, source code is already available for the software, but higher level aspects of the program, perhaps poorly documented or documented but no longer valid, are discovered. In the second case, there is no source code available for the software, and any efforts towards discovering one possible source code for the software are regarded as reverse engineering. This second usage of the term is the one most people are familiar with. Reverse engineering of software can make use of the clean room design technique to avoid infringing copyrights.

Reasons for reverse-engineering:

Interoperability.
Lost documentation: Reverse engineering often is done because the documentation of a particular device has been lost (or was never written), and the person who built it is no longer available. Integrated circuits often seem to have been designed on obsolete, proprietary systems, which means that the only way to incorporate the functionality into new technology is to reverse-engineer the existing chip and then re-design it.

Product analysis. To examine how a product works, what components it consists of, estimate costs, identify potential patent infringement.

Security auditing.

Removal of copy protection, circumvention of access restrictions.

Creation of unlicensed/unapproved duplicates.

Academic/learning purposes.

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