There and Back Again: Reverse Engineering Python Binaries

on YouTube ↗38m

" summary

Shows how to recover readable .py from .pyc by hand with a concrete pipeline: segmentation, translation, control-flow reconstruction and demonstrates practical tools like the dis module, uncompyle6, bilingual and a compile-then-compare verification. Reports surprising churn in opcodes (roughly under 10% yearly, ~25% in 3.11), explains handling exception tables and block stack changes, and shows a neural decompiler that mostly works while leaving small omissions that are fixable by hand. Targets CPython bytecode; nonstandard compilers or obfuscation break verification.

AI-written summary · about

" chapters (8)

1. 0:00Reverse engineering Python binaries
2. 2:38Python bytecode compilation
3. 10:25Python bytecode execution
4. 15:43Manual bytecode decompilation
5. 21:18Control flow reconstruction
6. 27:19Stitching code objects
7. 28:47Automating decompilation
8. 33:53Summary

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