Reverse engineering can be illegal. We, software vendors, aren’t happy when someone peeks into our software. Purposes for doing so can be peaceful or malicious.
Peaceful uses are to develop a program cooperating with the one being reverse engineered, even to fix a bug in the program if the software is no longer maintained. 1stplugins once created a plug-in injected into [1] a 3rd party audio software adding accessibility features to a program [2], which was then used by a blind person.
Malicious use encompasses changing computer software, such as adding malicious code to an otherwise harmless program, cracking the program to avoid copy protection, understanding serial number scheme to create a serial number generator, or using reverse engineering to copy a product. Such uses of reverse engineering are illegal and we strictly deny such requests.
References
- Tomas Zahradnicky and Robert Lorencz: Making nonaccessible applications accessible for visually impaired. ICCHP’06 Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs. pp. 1047-1054, Linz, Austria, 2006.
- Tomas Zahradnicky, Robert Lorencz, and Pavel Musil: Making ProTools Accessible for Visually Impaired. ICCHP’08 Proceedings of the 11th international conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs. pp. 781-788, Linz, Austria, 2008.