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Comment by colechristensen

21 hours ago

I spent the last week successfully reverse engineering my car / various scan tools to get the right information to diagnose a fuel pump problem (and to do so without the incredible awkwardness of many of the tools)

It's pretty amazing what Claude + Ghidra + knowledgable coaching can accomplish. It was basically just setting direction, setting up an incremental workflow with the right kind of documentation, and questioning some of its theories and assumptions from time to time.

I'd love to release a lot of it but I'm torn between releasing artifacts created with expensive software I paid for and thinking that many of those things should really be freely available to anyone (specifically the things which definte the protocol to talk to the car and mapping of what various things are reported vs what they actually mean.

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colechristensen

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sokoloff  12 hours ago

> I'd love to release a lot of it but I'm torn between releasing artifacts created with expensive software I paid for and thinking that many of those things should really be freely available to anyone

Release it or not, but either way you’re almost certainly going to get paid back the same amount of money: $0.

tclancy  20 hours ago

Wait, why wouldn’t you post it/ write it up?

  • bluGill  9 hours ago

    If you release it people expect you to support it an answer questions. Some of them are not even nice about it. It pays to release this only if there is a group of people who will be constructive in helping make it better, otherwise it is a thankless effort.

  • colechristensen  2 hours ago

    The difference in ethics between reverse engineering something to be able to fully use/repair it vs. reverse engineering something to clone it. Also violating a license agreement I freely accepted and exposing myself to liability for IP theft. But is the IP just gatekeeping vehicle manufacturers hiding information from owners or is the IP the creation of this tool company or is it something in between

markb139  11 hours ago

I’ve recently built a disassembler and emulator using Claude to help reverse engineer a 90’s ECU based on an Intel embedded cpu. It was quite impressive to watch when Claude started to use the emulator to help understand how bits of the code worked.

  • colechristensen  2 hours ago

    The juxtaposition of Claude+Ghidra being able to take apart understand and reimplement the core features of this thing in hours while also having to babysit it "no, those encrypted packets going over the CAN bus aren't from wifi" and "please actually look at the code you just decompiled instead of guessing how they work" was pretty amusing.

zxexz  16 hours ago

Sorry, what are you talking about? Just release it? Are you talking about trying to make money off it? Are you claiming you reverse engineered ecu tuning software you paid for?

stolsvik  15 hours ago

You really must be new to this, huh? Expensive software that you paid for?! Claude? Yes, the question is whether you want to share knowledge that cost you literally nothing, and will bring humanity one microscopic step in a better direction - or not, feeling superior in that only you have access to that knowledge. You have a choice!