No Stupid Questions (Developer Edition)

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How do people make patches for closed source software from outside its software company/devs? (lemm.ee)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/no_stupid_questions

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You see this with some apps (I think ReVanced is a popular example?) and games occasionally, and I've never been clear on how they do it.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Compiled binaries can be decompiled back into source code. It’s not perfect by any means, but I was very surprised how well it worked the first time I decompiled a .Net application. With this as your base you can then make changes and recompile a new binary. This glosses over a lot of detail, and there are other ways like obtaining a leaked copy of the source code.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Are the tools involved typically called decompilers, or would you happen to know the different names they may go by? Trying to make sure I have some solid terms to guide my own research. Thanks for the response!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Yep, decompiler is the correct term

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