It's been a long time since I've been on here, but it's good to see the site is still going. Anyway, partly based on a desire to document a structured approach to software reverse engineering, partly because I've found the books already out there to be pretty awful, and partly to document some aspects of the culture that have thus far remained unnoted I am aiming to write an SRE book over the next year or so.

Background: I work in IT security (started with malware analysis at an AV company, now do black/grey/white box testing/research), and having had enough of an industry that is normally on the verge of selling snake-oil (if not doing so outright) I am taking an indefinite break from work to do whatever I feel like. I've spent a lot of time over the past 8 years reversing a variety of different things on different platforms (some pretty exotic), and it would be nice to structure and document what I have learned over that period of time.

The book: I already have an outline - rather than being tool or platform focussed, the book will provide a structured, ground-up approach to SRE. My own personal view is that as an engineering discipline SRE significantly benefits from a thorough grounding in the underlying design and implementation principles of computer hardware, operating systems, and software. [I was taught 16bit Intel assembly in the knowledge that once I understood how it worked conceptually, I would be able to apply that conceptual knowledge to other architectures - whether IA32, ARM, or something more exotic]. At any rate, I would start at the basics of computer hardware, and build up from that to the concepts necessary to create an operating system (irrespective of the kernel architecture), to the software platforms built on top of that.

Aside from that, I would like to cover some of the history of the SRE scene, if possible. I know there are people on this forum who have been involved in the scene for a long time now, and I would like to capture some of the history while it is still possible. Culturally and historically this is as important to me as documenting the closely related demo scene [though I've never been involved, I've been aware of the demo scene for a long time, and now films like Moleman 2 are coming out which is no bad thing]. Beyond that, I would also like to cover off 'reality cracking' as well. Whenever I have given internal presentations on reverse engineering I have included reversing adverts due to it being more fun, approachable, and practical for a lot of people who are otherwise being bored by me droning on [I can't remember where the source is, but there was one ad reversing challenge of a woman sat on a wharf/promenade by the sea - I presented this in one talk, and had the joy of someone actually solving it, which was great since I didn't even know what it was an ad for when I picked it]. Anyway, I've followed the information collected at Fravia's old site, and would like to aggregate and build on it if at all possible.

What I need from the willing: I can't write all of it myself, so any help on specific technical areas I'd like to cover that I'm not that au fait with would be greatly appreciated. Beyond that, I have virtually no information on the history of SRE aside from these forums, and a few scant other materials collected from elsewhere. Anyone wanting to give me their own view on that subject would be more than welcome. Any and all contributions/ideas for the reality cracking section would be happily received. Any general requests for content/structure will be considered.

Finally: I intend to release anything under the Creative Commons license - I have no particular interest in either restricting or monetizing this information, and would rather it was for and representative of the SRE community. Anyway, if anyone is interested in helping then please PM or otherwise notify me of your interest. I have a moderately high-level breakdown of the entire structure book that I can share if anyone is interested. Authorship will be noted however you desire - real name, handle, or anonymous. I'm going to be jobless starting from July, so will be starting work in earnest then. I have no idea how to organize multi-user contributions for a project like this, but a wiki may suffice (a la wikibooks).

Gracias a todo,
autarky

http://www.woodmann.com/searchlores/searching_image_challenge_2008_1.htm

And if anyone is interested in the schematic I have for the book, then the current outline is follows.

http://sdrv.ms/16XJQNV

On Skydrive, unfortunately. It's a Freemind mind map. Hopefully people are at least interested in DSPs and things like that. I may cover off mobile basebands as well.

And it was the following image search I was thinking of:

http://www.woodmann.com/searchlores/quietharbour.htm

Looking ofrward to this!
Could you..uh..upload a pdf or image version of that map thing?

http://sdrv.ms/19YOZ6Y

JPEG. Select Original or Download. I'll add more detail when I actually get properly started. And once I decide where to develop/release it.

Hello,

It's a well-appreciated endeavor -- one I hope will see the light of day.

I ran through the picture and have a few comments --

1. It seems you are writing a GENERIC book on computers -- with reverse engineering being one of the the topics, rather than the CORE IDEA around which this book is written.

2. RCE, in it's rawest form, has got only 1 chapter (assuming a node is a chapter). Not something I would tend to look at as an RCE book. Instead, I would be MIGHTY IMPRESSED, if each sub-node of the RCE chapter, was considered a chapter instead. As it stands, you'll not be able to go deep.

3. Personally -- the hardware is at a stage, where it's about to become obsolete -- but just not YET obsolete. What this means is, everyone and their grandmother is moving to 64-bit -- which is QUITE different from 32-bit reversing. But everyone has not YET moved there -- so you need to be careful here: Teach 32-bit, and concepts become obsolete in around 1-2 years time. Teach 64-bit and you'll not satisfy people reading this NOW, who are using 32-bit and will continue to use 32 bit. ALL RCE for 64-bit, is currently in a state of flux. And not THAT easy a learning curve --

4. So it's actually a choice of TIMING -- when are you going to release this book. If it's in another 4-6 months, it's going to work well for another year -- 2 at the most. If you are releasing the book after about a year or so, it makes sense to focus on 64-bit.

5. Regardless -- it's a noble intention. And one well - appreciated.

Let us know how it rolls.

Have Phun