Academy track

Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering as the academy's flagship discipline. RE-011 is the gateway (binary structure, file formats, the static-analysis vocabulary); RE-101 takes the student through a real commercial target (the Motorola SB6141 cable modem) end-to-end; RE-201 caps with burst-radio signal RE in the SDR domain.

3 courses · 2 ready All tracks → Filter to Reverse Engineering on the index →
VCA-RE-011 Belt 2/5
Ready / Enroll

Introduction to Reverse Engineering

11th Grade Spring — RE conceptual scaffolding

Hex editors, x86-64 assembly, Ghidra, CrackMes, guided firmware teardown. Conceptual scaffolding for RE-101. Capstone: professional-register firmware analysis report.

~100 hr
Prereq: SEC-101 + HW-101
Equipment: None (laptop-only; Ghidra + hex editors + free tooling); soldering kit access (shared lab, ~$30 supplies/student) for Lab 8
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VCA-RE-101 Belt 4/5
FlagshipReady / EnrollPilot Cohort

Reverse Engineering of Embedded Systems

Flagship — graduate register, SB6141 capstone

Complete methodology for recovering design information, firmware, and crypto from commercial embedded systems without vendor source. PCB → SPI/I²C/UART/JTAG → SoC bring-up → firmware extraction → patch-and-reflash. Capstone: end-to-end RE of a Motorola SURFboard SB6141 cable modem.

~178 hr
Prereq: Full pipeline or equivalent (RE-011 load-bearing)
Equipment: Provided via Hardware Checkout pool — SB6141 cable modem (canonical lab target)
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VCA-RE-201 Belt 5/5
Coming soon

Reverse Engineering of Burst Radio Signals

Post-RE-101 — RF stream capstone

SDR methodology for capturing, demodulating, and reverse engineering short-burst RF protocols — IoT sensors, keyless-entry, industrial telemetry. Anchored in instructor's masters-thesis subject matter.

~140 hr
Prereq: VCA-RE-101
Equipment: SDR + antenna kit (~$400–550 BOM); shared-pool option pending Hardware Checkout decision
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