27 August 2009

Reverse Engineering Java Apps

Professionally, I am a Java developer and had worked sparingly in C++ and other scripting languages. I always felt that Java is easier and with the modern day IDEs like Eclipse and Netbeans, you don't even need to know what is compilation and building and similarly you dont even need to know OOPS. As an interviewer, I always face candidates, at least handful, who do not know how to set the classpath and compile using "javac".

Java by its inherent nature is very easier than C/C++ and these IDEs make it much easier. If forward is easier then in most of the cases the reversing should also be easier (but there are exceptions like security algorithms). Unfortunately, reversing Java applications is much easier and I would say it is much easier than developing it. In the next couple of weeks, I ll be writing few posts on my experiences with reversing Java applications and my inputs on how to carry out effective penetration testing for Java applications.