Advancing in reverse engineering/vuln research

I'm getting close to finishing writing my cheat for the Linux version of Counter Strike 2. Moving to reversing a real target after only being exposed to little toy programs was really fun, but I'm not sure where I should go from here. -Real vulnerability research sounds like a total time sink that destroys your health. -I have no idea how I would reverse anything that I can't dynamically analyse. The only reason I was able to RE Counter Strike was because I could set breakpoints/tracepoints. -I am genuinely scared of coming across serious countermeasures like bespoke packers, virtualised functions, or anti-debugging features. No idea where I would start. Where do I go from here lains? Do I try to crack open some soykafty mobile app and see if any of it is vulnerable? How would I even begin finding something like this in an executable that's 50Mb+ in size? If any of you have undertaken serious RE/vuln research before, can you tell me what the process usually looks like, and how you approach it? Also, is it worth committing so heavily to RE? I've neglected everything else to focus on this for just over a year now. I wrote some bespoke tooling during this time that is genuinely useful, but going like this seems unsustainable. I checked my portage (gentoo pkgmngr) configs today and they're a nightmare lol, I really need to catch up on all other aspects of security. I think I am just tired. This project has been (and I'm sure will still be, I am not done yet) really exhausting.

I'm a noob when It comes to this stuff so grain of salt(I've only done some CTFs, I haven't done any real targets yet), but there's a youtuber called jeFF0Falltrades that has some tutorials on reversing. Also I've heard that the book art of software security assessment is a good book for vuln research. Sorry if this is not too helpful

Sounds like you’ve gotten to a fork in the road. Do you like RE? If so, just focus on that only. You’ve already spent a year on it. If you don’t, then try something else. If you want to keep working on it, just try some soykafty stuff you don’t like. Or cracking like steam DRM if I remember correctly that’s pretty easy to break.

>>24000 I'd like to focus on it, but I have to be conscious of employment too unfortunately. Due to my dating situation I am not eligible to work for government RE / vuln research contractors. I also don't think I am talented enough for vuln houses. I think I'll probably keep RE as a hobby. >>23999 I'll check him out lain ^_^

>>24011 Since you started with games: try static reversing on older games key verification. A friend of mine worked his way up from there to the point where he is getting (small ammounts of) money for developing cheats. This is his new motivation

My two cents, since it's necrobumped anyway: ‣ Cracking games, productivity software, artificially locked hardware is helpful to society and morally justified. It's the only way things can be preserved and free. ‣ Proprietary software is cursed. Consider building more open, more based alternatives instead of engaging with proprietary. ‣ Reversing DRM is even more cursed and mentally exhausting, don't recommend it. There's enough content, software out there that's free of DRM already. ‣ Moving targets are annoying. You can spend 5 years perfectly reversing Denuvo, creating the holy grail 400 MB to 2 MB generic Denuvo stripper tool with 1000 pages of impeccable documentation. In a few months Denuvo releases the next system that takes years to reverse again. Scrambling is much easier than unscrambling. ‣ For the criminal money making route you'd typically analyze apps quick and dirty for low-hanging fruit like embedded credentials and undocumented APIs, most likely with the goal of ransomware encrypting or stealing some company's data. ‣ You could become a blessed anti-anti-repair reverser. Problem is we live in a dystopia and once John Deere & co. notice your work, they'll bury you with legal fees. With hardware involved you're more traceable. ‣ To keep motivated for years, you'd realistically have to do technically illegal reversing one way or another. ‣ In conclusion, I wouldn't personally waste even an hour on DRM, it's a cat and mouse game and the odds are forever against you. Opt out of that crap as a user. If it's your calling then go for it, but since you're asking instead of reversing, maybe it isn't.