maluramichael/awesome-reverse-engineer-anything

What it is

An Awesome-style curated list of open projects that reverse engineer closed software, games, consoles, protocols and devices, plus the tools used to take them apart. Entries are grouped into Apps, Games, Emulators, Protocols/APIs/Formats, Hardware and Firmware, and Tools, and each row gives the original target, a one-line description, star count, last commit date and a health score.

Inclusion is gated: a project needs at least 500 stars and a commit within the last year, and once listed it stays. A Trending table ranks entries by stars gained per day over the last 7 days, using lifetime averages until daily snapshots exist. The list is generated from data/projects rather than edited by hand generation note.

It suits people who want an orientation map of the reverse-engineering ecosystem: decompilation projects, static recompilations, source ports, emulators, open clients for private APIs, firmware tooling, and debuggers/decompilers such as Ghidra and Frida tools section. It is a reading and discovery resource, not a runnable tool.

How to use it

There is nothing to install. Open the README and choose a category from the contents, for example Games or Protocols, APIs and Formats. Read the table row for the description, then follow the linked project to its own repository for build, download and licensing details.

For a quick orientation, start with the Trending table, then jump to the matching category anchor. To follow the list's own changes, check the Growth and Star History sections Growth Star History.

Contributions go through an issue form that a bot turns into a pull request; the contribution guidelines describe the entry format contribution guidelines.

Constraints and caveats

• The list is popularity-filtered, not quality-reviewed: the 500-star and recent-commit thresholds say nothing about correctness, maintenance depth or safety of the listed projects.
• The health column is explicitly a sum of facts GitHub reports (license, commit spread, contributors, open issues, archived state) and is stated not to reflect quality footnote.
• Star figures are point-in-time values (last fetched 2026-11-02), and the Trending "stars per day" numbers are lifetime averages where daily snapshots are missing.
• The repository is documentation: every listed project has its own license, platform requirements and legal constraints (several game recompilations require your own game files and ship no game data).
• The repository itself is CC-BY-4.0 licensed.

HotRepo's take

The project appeared on HotRepo's new-project board for Python on 2026-11-03 with 100 stars and 4 forks, all recorded as gained in a window from 2026-11-02 to 2026-11-03 — essentially its entire star count at that point. One snapshot is enough to confirm it charted, not to judge staying power. What stands out technically is the bot-generated structure: source data in data/projects, a deterministic scoring script, and a stated inclusion rule that only grows the list. The trade-off is visible in the same design — a list that never removes entries will drift toward being a historical archive, so the Trending table is the part most worth checking for current activity.