What is reverse enginering?

Answer 1

Reverse engineering is discovering technology by examining its finished product. It can be done a number of ways such as observing how it works and trying to duplicate the results or taking it apart.

Say you don't know anything about guns. You see a gun fired... what happened? The shooter pulled back the hammer, squeezed the trigger, and the hammer is now back to its original position. You then take the gun apart, looking at how it fits together you can see the trigger lets the hammer fall forward and hits where the bullet is located. You now know the essentials on how a gun works (there are other factors but that's the gist of it).

Answer 2

Reverse Engineering is the process where we start with a finished product, and by dis-assembly etc, we figure out how it was made.

It applies to any intellectual endeavour, software, hardware and so on.

Answer 3

its obvious, its a pimple filled with purple pus