Need some reverse engineering effort.

[Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>]

On 05/14/2016 09:58 AM, Nirav Patel wrote:
> I am a newbie in this field. And there's lots of coding in this (wl) driver.
> It contains support for all (obviously except those very newly
> released ones) broadcom devices including the AC, HT, extended_N phy's
> and 20691 devices. Any help is appreciated.
> I don't understand where to start. From what I can figure out, the
> structure and coding pattern is similar to the brcmsmac driver.
> It would be very easy to make modifications and additions to brcmsmac
> driver. But if I am not wrong the similar patterns would obviously
> hurt the copyrights and also the clean-room design.
> Is it possible to modify the brcmsmac driver without claiming
> copyrights for the new code (which is also of broadcom like the
> brcmsmac driver itself) ?
> And is there any mailing-list or a community for the brcmsmac driver like this?
> I know the last 2 questions are outside the scope here, but any help
> is greatly appreciated.
>
> On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 9:30 PM, Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> wrote:
>> On 05/13/2016 08:30 AM, Nirav Patel wrote:
>>>
>>> Tired of resending email due to HTML text error. Anyway now back to the
>>> subject:
>>>
>>> I have found some linux binaries for the wl (apsta) driver which can
>>> be easily reverse engineered.
>>> http://svn.dd-wrt.com/browser/src#linux/universal/linux-4.4/brcm/arm
>>> This contains the arm binaries. Look for other binaries here
>>> http://svn.dd-wrt.com/browser/src#linux/universal
>>> in this way: Browse the desired linux version (mips binaries are only
>>> in linux 2.x which are probably outdated) > brcm > architecture
>>> (probably arm or mipsel) > wl
>>> Since the binaries are almost separate for each file they can be
>>> easily reverse engineered.
>>> It seems that Hex-rays IDA (sadly so costly) would easily decompile as
>>> well as disassemble them.
>>>
>>> @Larry Can you please reverse engineer these binaries and upload the
>>> specs to the website?
>>> It would be of great help for b43 development. Thanks in advance.
>>
>>
>> If those binaries are so easily reverse engineered, I suggest you do them
>> yourself. I used to do that, but I now have other responsibilities that
>> occupy my time.

I can tell you are a newby because you are top posting. For your personal 
E-mail, posting your reply before the stuff you are adding is OK, but it is 
discouraged in mailing lists like this. It becomes very difficult to go from the 
bottom to the top and back again when you read the thread.

The source code that comes with the hybrid wl driver is just the glue between 
the code that operates the chip and the operating system. With b43 or brcmsmac, 
that code is mostly in the kernel already. The part that needs to be reverse 
engineered is the binary blob usually named wt_apsta.o. There is no distributed 
source for that part. You need either to decompile that routine and figure out 
what it is doing, or interpret the data that wl reads and writes when operating 
the device. The first method is probably not legal as the Broadcom license for 
wl probably forbids decompiling. The second method is very difficult without 
knowing how wl is structured.

Yes, you should use brcmsmac or brcmfmac as models for the structure of the 
driver for a new device. but without some knowledge of the chip internals, the 
process is very difficult.

Good luck,

Larry