Custom software / licensing / protection / reverse engineering
ByteLab is an independent engineering practice. We build custom software, license and protect what you ship, and reverse-engineer the systems nobody documented, from application code down to the kernel.
0x01 / Services
Four disciplines across the whole life of a binary: we work forward when you’re building, and backward when you’re stuck. When a problem reaches the kernel, so do we.
SRV/01
Applications, services and internal tooling built to fit how your business actually works, instead of bending your business around a tool that nearly fits. Yours to keep at the end: clean code, documentation, no lock-in.
SRV/02
A licensing model is a contract enforced by code. We design entitlement systems that survive contact with real customers (offline sites, air‑gapped networks, VM sprawl) and implement them with modern cryptography instead of obscurity.
SRV/03
Assume a hostile runtime. We layer anti‑tamper, integrity verification and targeted obfuscation (in user space, or in the kernel where it’s warranted) so that breaking your software costs more than buying it, and so you find out when someone tries.
SRV/04
When the source is missing or a vendor vanished, we work back from the binaries and the traffic to recover what your systems depend on, and turn undocumented systems into engineering facts you can build on.
0x02 / Method
Fixed scope or retained, always documented, never a black box. Four phases, each with a concrete output you keep.
Phase 01
We model the threat before touching code: who attacks your software, with what tools, for what gain. Your current licensing and protection get the same scrutiny an attacker would give them.
Output → Findings memo & threat model
Phase 02
Mechanisms on paper first (licensing model, protection layers, key handling), each costed for build impact, performance and maintenance before a line is written.
Output → Mechanism specification
Phase 03
We integrate into your codebase and CI, not beside it. Everything we add is documented, testable and owned by your team on handover.
Output → Integrated, reviewed code
Phase 04
Then we switch sides and attack our own work: measuring time‑to‑bypass, closing what we find, and writing down what would break next.
Output → Adversarial review report
0x03 / Working surface
The shipped binary is the material: bytes on disk, mapped into memory, running in front of a hostile world. This is the ground we stand on and the range we cover.
Fig. 02 · live read. What’s in the bytes is the whole job.
0x04 / About
Protection is a moving target. We treat it as an engineering discipline. Measured, versioned, verified. Never a checkbox.
ByteLab is a small, senior practice. The people you meet are the people who do the work, engineers who have shipped licensing systems, hardened commercial software and spent years inside other people’s binaries.
We keep the team small on purpose. This is precision work, and precision doesn’t delegate well.
We work the defender’s side. We protect and analyse software for the people who own or license it. When our work turns up a flaw that affects a third party, it goes through coordinated disclosure, never into the wild.
0x05 / Contact
A sentence or two about your software and what worries you is enough to start. We reply within two working days, and an NDA is never a problem.