For the firmware case specifically, some embedded processors support encrypted, signed firmware and encrypted memory. The physical defenses of the processor would need to be defeated to recover the unencrypted binary. That's not impossible (defeat of protections on game consoles being an example) but it would take physical access to the hardware and specialized tooling to even attempt.
Maybe that's a possible future? Chips are not that expensive compared to the price of an app so each app can come on its own SOM in a cartridge to run its core logic. The computer just serves as a terminal and auxiliary compute server to the app cartridge.
Patents and copyright.
Turning a binary into source code that would compile into an identical-to-the-bit binary seems like it would be a copyright violation (caveat: IANAL).
Even an imperfect copy would (again, IANAL) sound to me like a patent law question.
Copyright laws didn't even pause the Big AI companies from hoovering up all material to train their systems. With their financial and thus legal resources they would be very expensive to sue for patent infringement.
Interested and following as someone wanting to maximize reverse engineering capabilities.
IMO it's a double-edged sword. What if, as a direct consequence of the new RE capabilities, there eventually won't be any new "juicy" binaries to decompile because every important piece of software will run on a company's server while you will have just a thin client (as someone pointed in [1])?
Even remotely.
At a certain point, an AI looks at what the software does and figures out what functions would produce the observed results.
If it turns out to be different to the original, but stil gets the job done, how often will the distinction matter?
This is the way.
“Computah, replicate target system. Use whatever resources are required to build requirements and specs, ship to software factory when necessary.” Whenever models and harnesses improve, improve reverse engineering accordingly.
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