What makes reversing special to me

I am a mechanical engineer by education, software engineer by profession. I had developed an interest in reversing, crackmes, packers, unpackers, crypters, protectors, shellcoding, binary analysis, malware analysis, binary exploitation, computer viruses, assembly language, C and C++ languages, obfuscation, encryption, steganography, and many more — a beautiful world of reverse engineering. I used to play CTFs solo and in teams.

Unfortunately, I had to keep all these hobbies aside and do something real for a living. This shift made me stay away from my passion for more than 12 years. But the desire never died.

Very recently I decided to start again what I left off. My goal is not to secure any job or establish a profession here. And if that happens, by all means I will take it. But more importantly, it is the journey that I ride and the skills that I learn from this craft that draw me.

In addition to the technical skills developed, there are other life skills that will be developed too. For example, reverse engineers don’t give up, and are persistent, overcome frustration, always hopeful, patient, tactful, retrospective, and more.

I love the world of reversing, for I feel it’s so magical. You make and break things that are not meant to be done. You engage with like-minded people without their presence. Especially when you are analyzing malware, it’s always a couple’s dance between the malware author and the reverse engineer. They always try to be in sync and, at the same time, think what the next move should be.

Reversing taught me so much about computer science. I never formally studied operating systems, networks, virtual machines, compilers, programming languages, etc. I am forced to think about these systems during reversing in order to get better at it.

Overall, it’s helping me to think properly — to become a better version of myself with my technical skills, work hard, and be awesome.