Generative AI dramatically lowers costs and effort in reverse engineering
Cheap AI-Assisted Reverse Engineering and What It Will Do
Computers and SocietyCryptography and Security
Summary
Reverse engineering used to be difficult, expensive, and needing special skills, which helped protect inventions from being copied unfairly. The authors explain how AI is changing this by making reverse engineering much faster and easier, allowing people to identify hardware, extract and understand software, and copy apps more quickly. This shift challenges current laws that were made assuming reverse engineering is hard. The authors also discuss how legal systems might adapt to these changes and what compromises those adaptations could involve.
What this means in practice
- •For technology vendors: Assess and update legal strategies to address AI-enabled rapid reverse engineering threats.
- •For software developers: Evaluate how AI-assisted reverse engineering alters risks around app cloning and IP protection.
A position paper. It proposes an approach and reports no results.
Authors
Ilan Mandel, Madiha Zahrah Choksi, Joey Castillo, Sebastian Benthall, James Grimmelmann
Abstract
Generative AI is putting the law of reverse engineering (RE) under severe strain. Existing IP and technology laws assume that RE is expensive and time-consuming, and that it requires specialized expertise. They generally allow it, but they rely on its difficulty as a filter to separate (permissible) RE from (impermissible) copying and theft. Generative AI is changing this equation by making \RE much faster, cheaper, and easier. AI systems can identify hardware components, extract firmware, decompile object code, and clone entire apps. The resulting struggle between technology vendors and reverse engineers will challenge a wide range of laws, including trade secret, copyright, anti-circumvention, computer misuse, and contract. In this article, we describe the ways in which AI is changing \RE, map these new practices onto existing laws, and sketch ways that the legal system could respond and their associated trade-offs.