reverse engineering

Tool names are not the answer. Interviewers want to know what each view can and cannot tell you, and why a decompiler's output is a hypothesis to be checked at runtime.

Interviewers give an unfamiliar binary to see method, not stamina. Start from the question, find the code that touches the secret through imports and strings, confirm at runtime, and report what you proved and what you did not.

A bypass screenshot is not a finding. Interviewers look for whether you can separate 'I changed my own copy of the program' from 'I can now do something the server should have stopped'.

Every obfuscation must still run on the CPU in a form the CPU understands. That single fact tells you how each one is undone, and why obfuscation buys time rather than secrecy.

A single check is a single patch. The design question is how to make removing protection expensive, detectable at scale, and pointless because the server holds the real decisions.

EDR products, profilers, game cheats and banking trojans all use the same trick: make a call to function A run your code first. Knowing the mechanics tells you both how to detect it and why user-mode hooks are a weak place for security controls.

All three face the same impossible brief: let the user's device use a secret without letting the user have it. The good designs change the brief instead of pretending to meet it.

A patch is a map to the bug it fixes. The interview question is what that means for disclosure timing, open-source fixes and your own patch deadlines.

An agent that renames 4,000 functions overnight is a real gain. An agent that confidently explains what a function does without checking is a liability. Interviewers want both halves and the controls in between.

Unzip, decompile, read the manifest, then watch it run. The interview checks whether you know where the interesting parts of an app hide, and that obfuscation changes your effort, not your conclusions.

Moving a secret into C changes who can find it in an afternoon, not whether it can be found. The scored answer shows how an analyst would recover it, then replaces the design with one that does not need a shared secret.

Pinning protects the user from the network. It was never going to protect your API from the person holding the phone, and the good answer explains both halves.