I'm wondering how they actually reverse engineered WhatsApp in the first place. Is there a specific type of software that does this or was it just built from scratch using already available information?
Hi, I'm sigalor, the original creator of the project. The reverse engineering was almost entirely done using the Chrome debugging tools. That is, pretty-printing the JS source files, setting breakpoints and stepping through the code for hours. When I started, all of this was incredibly difficult, but the longer you do it, the more you get used to it.
Additionally, the debugging tools also provide you with looking at what is sent through websockets, which makes it rather easy to see which JSON data is sent (e.g. for login).
It certainly did, but after all it was just a fun spare time project.
I guess there would be a lot of interesting software to reverse engineer; I am always open to suggestions that are able to extend my knowledge. And well, if you mean it in context of a job... I don't have any experience regarding the job market yet, but that also sounds quite striking :)
I don't know much about the job market, I was talking about the internet in general. Too many applications are locked black boxes and reverse engineering them basically keeps them alive after their demise. However, not a lot of people actually put in the effort to reverse engineer this stuff, so keep up the good work for this stuff!