Protocol reverse engineering is the process of uncovering a formal specification for a network protocol from analyzing individual network packets. It is crucial to system security as it enables the identification of vulnerabilities and the creation of more robust defenses.
While protocol reverse engineers perform this work manually, automation could enable them to perform this task faster and with greater precision. This paper explores the needs of protocol reverse engineers and how automation / AI systems can best address those needs.
Read the paper to learn more about our recommendations and insights!
Katcher, Samantha, James Mattei, Jared Chandler, and Daniel Votipka. “An Investigation of Interaction and Information Needs for Protocol Reverse Engineering Automation.” In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–21. Yokohama Japan: ACM, 2025. Accessed June 6, 2025. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3706598.3713630.
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