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Comment by jabroni_salad | Hacker News Reader

If my exmil co-workers have taught me anything its that anything and everything can be macgyver'd in a pinch. If jerry rigging was a sport these guys would be ranked competitive players.

In this case, your 'threat actor' is servicemen and 'arms race' is like, their whole thing. These guys are bored out of their mind for 95% of their career and will take anything apart if the activity gets them 2 hrs closer to a break.

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I bet they cannot macgyver it if it’s software locked.

Screwdrivers and duct taped on wires can be remarkably effective at bypassing switches and relays.

And having a random private stand around and poke something with a screwdriver when you want something to explode is, well, pretty much how much of the military works anyway.

You drastically overestimate the vast majority of military systems.

because they can't run Ida pro and hack it?

Not “in a pinch”.

There exists Ghidra ... :-)

Created by ... the military.

It is debatable whether you consider the NSA to be part of the military or to be something separate.

But the reply is so much more fun if we consider it part of the military.

And the years of prep work to be able to run the software effectively.....?

Call bored reverser colleague who helped test Ghidra.

Where do I get one of those in a public Edu?

This sub-thread is about "your 'threat actor' is servicemen and 'arms race' is like, their whole thing", but academic researchers at TU Delft, TU Dresden, ETH Zurich & peer institutions might have relevant skills.

See the top story on HN front page: air conditioner customer bypasses software-locked broken tablet to run Android control panel app on generic hardware, avoiding $1600 extortionate "repair" fee. Not only did they learn an entirely new reversing toolkit just to solve this one problem, they did a 10-year upgrade of their blog so they could tell the world how they did it. Macgyver would approve. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41386319

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