Insights from the MAME project into hardware reverse engineering

Proposta de palestra enviada para a conferência LibrePlanet 2016

Hardware reverse engineering insights from the MAME project: a path towards free firmware.

Bio

Felipe Sanches é ativista e desenvolvedor de software livre e projetista de hardware livre. Co-fundador da Metamáquina, empresa brasileira de impressão 3d, é um entusiasta das tecnologias de fabricação digital. Participa do desenvolvimento de softwares livres nas áreas de design gráfico, CAD e modelagem/impressão 3D como Inkscape, OpenSCAD, Pronterface e GNU LibreDWG. É também co-fundador do Garoa Hacker Clube, primeiro hackerspace brasileiro, e do PoliGNU: Grupo de Estudos de Software Livre da Escola Politécnica da USP.

Description

The MAME project's main stated purpose is the historical preservation of old computer hardware. The strategy for achieving that goal is by inspecting the devices and by developing emulators for them. While most hardware is undocumented and relies on proprietary firmware, the MAME development community has nurtured strong reverse engineering practices.

The techniques that we need to master in order to develop new emulators include reverse engineering procedures that are also very useful for aiding in the creation of free firmware solutions to replace the non-free blobs used in a broad variety of daily-use devices. These skills are also useful for the development of free drivers for undocumented devices and in the porting of operating systems and BIOSes to new hardware platforms. We need to strengthen a community of skillful hardware reverse engineers so that we can solve the freedom issues denounced by projects such as Linux-Libre and Libreboot.