Reverse Engineering GPU drivers using AI + Ghidra MCP

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paikuhan
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Reverse Engineering GPU drivers using AI + Ghidra MCP

Post by paikuhan »

Hello world!
I saw a video about AI and Reverse Engineering (video games, etc.) using Ghidra MCP. And I thought what if really good reverse engineers could use that combo to reverse engineer all the GPU drivers. Maybe even make a tutorial on OSDev Wiki on how to code the drivers for one own OS (explaining, the interrupts, etc.).

That would definitely change the game, everyone could have a their own custom OS with full-fledged drivers, etc. I can already imagine myself running a custom OS and making it hard for black hats to find a vulnerability (since they won't know what OS I'm running, etc.)
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AnotherIdiot
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Re: Reverse Engineering GPU drivers using AI + Ghidra MCP

Post by AnotherIdiot »

I see quite a lot of issues with this.

#1 As for the "black hats" part, there is no such thing as a black hat, those are all generic terms.
#2 If you are running a custom OS it is as a matter of fact far easier for an attacker to attack you if they are determined enough as almost certainly more exploits will exist as you cannot audit every line professionally compared to Linux which gets bug fixes almost 24/7 for every release (and literally all major Operating Systems, Windows, macOS, the Linux Kernel, *BSD).
#3 Most GPU drivers are open source, NVIDIA open sourced all GPU drivers for the RTX series I think 30xx and beyond and AMD has been open source for a while. Other ones like 3dfx still have amazing documentation at that. And for the NVIDIA GPUs not open sourced there are still Open Source drivers for those ones, though not official and they have some problems.
#4 If you ran a custom OS you wouldn't have very good app compatibility, hell FreeBSD, a massive project, still can barely run steam and some games still don't work after years of work on the Linuxulator and steam specific patches, so you wouldn't be able to daily drive it.
#5 As per #3 its still EXTREMELY difficult to write an OS and port fully accelerated GPU drivers with OpenGL and Vulkan.
#6 Your post also assumes you would even be able to get to that point. And reverse engineering GPU drivers would be very expensive using an AI or doing it by hand and also AI would make far more bugs and flaws almost certainly.
#7 It would be almost certainly easier to find what functions the GPU drivers need to work and export and just use those and create a patcher script that uses WiFi/Ethernet to pull the drivers and use them in the OS installs to avoid violating their copyright.
#8 It would be VERY expensive and hard to maintain to have a world where "everyone could have their own custom OS" because AI makes mistakes, and these systems are complicated.

Overall, good idea on the surface level but if you do it as long as I have, its hell on earth. Hell most people who have done it for just a few years (such as I) barely have a userland (though I say most since some have full fledged ones with POSIX APIs and others don't).
Every CPU manufacturer sucks, make your own CPU :D
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iansjack
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Re: Reverse Engineering GPU drivers using AI + Ghidra MCP

Post by iansjack »

Be aware that reverse engineering software is a legally contentious operation. For example, NVidia’s licence specifically prohibits reverse engineering. This means that you would be in breach of copyright laws if you copied the software to your computer in order to reverse engineer it and potentially face a law suit.

https://www.eff.org/issues/coders/rever ... eering-faq
nullplan
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Re: Reverse Engineering GPU drivers using AI + Ghidra MCP

Post by nullplan »

iansjack wrote: ↑Mon Oct 12, 2026 9:13 am Be aware that reverse engineering software is a legally contentious operation. For example, NVidia’s licence specifically prohibits reverse engineering. This means that you would be in breach of copyright laws if you copied the software to your computer in order to reverse engineer it and potentially face a law suit.
*laughs in German* Well, some countries have civilized laws. The German constitution grants me the inalienable right to freedom of research, which reverse engineering falls under. Any contract clause prohibiting it is null for that reason alone. Plus, I never had any agreement with the green-eyed monster to begin with.

For Americans, there is the workaround that clicking buttons that say "I agree" is not legally binding if you were excessively drunk when you pressed it. Please use this advice responsibly!
Carpe diem!
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