942 Pages Of Reverse Engineering Goodness [1]

I sometimes try to point out in these columns that a certain featured item may not be of interest to everyone. And if there's ever been an instance where that's 100% true, it's probably this one.

Reverse Engineering For Beginners, also known as RE4B, is a book about reverse engineering. That is to say, analysing software as-distributed in order to turn it back into its source code and thus find out precisely what it does. And how it does it. And how you might persuade it to do something slightly different, even if the program isn't one that you originally wrote.

If you're into programming, it's a fascinating read, as the book goes into stunning, fascinating detail about the subject and includes hundreds of examples. If you're not really into programming but you think you might like to be, it's still a fascinating read. But if it's not for you, you'll know it after the first few of its 942 pages.

RE4B is not only a top-notch technical book, it's completely free. You can view the PDF file at http://beginners.re/Reverse_Engineering_for_Beginners-en.pdf [3] and then save it to your PC if you wish.