Reverse engineering for beginners
A three-lesson path that takes you from "I saw the REA hype" to "I can read a disassembly and know what I am allowed to point an agent at." Every terminal block in this track was actually run on our lab machine.
What is reverse engineering?
The mental model — plus a real system binary (OpenSSL) under inspection.
15 min · verifiedstart →
Your first legal target
Compile your own, then reverse a hidden constant out of it — three-way reconciliation.
10 min · verifiedstart →
Reading a disassembly
Stripped binaries, anchor constants, and string evidence — the five moves.
25 min · verifiedstart →
how to use this track
Do the lessons in order — each one assumes the previous. None of them require paid tools or even an AI agent: everything runs with free binutils (file / readelf / objdump / strings), and every exercise target is something you are unambiguously allowed to analyze. When you finish, continue to the REA setup guide to run an agent-driven, evidence-backed case end to end.