usb-rea — Reverse Engineer any USB gadget

Got a USB device that only ships a Windows vendor app (case LCD, RGB controller, mouse, "smart" lamp)? Click around in the vendor app while usb-rea captures the USB traffic (usbmon on Linux, USBPcap on Windows), diffs the packets per action, infers the protocol, and writes an open-source Python/libusb driver — with every conclusion linked to the exact packets that prove it.

Status: alpha (v0.2.0). Validated on synthetic devices, on protocols documented by liquidctl and rivalcfg, and on public Wireshark captures — see docs/VALIDATION.md. Not yet tested on a physical gadget: your captures are welcome.

Try it in 10 seconds (no hardware needed)

pip install git+https://github.com/emirmrkaljevic/usb-rea
usb-rea demo --device fan

fan    100%  0x5a | counter (+1 per message) | 0x10 | u16be round(value * 1 + 0) | 0x00 | u16le crc16_modbus(bytes[0:6])
color  100%  0x5a | counter (+1 per message) | 0x20 | round(value * 1 + 0) | round(value[1] * 1 + 0) | round(value[2] * 1 + 0) | u16le crc16_modbus(bytes[0:6])
mode   100%  0x5a | counter (+1 per message) | 0x30 | lookup 1→0x11, 2→0x22, 3→0x47 | 0x00 | 0x00 | u16le crc16_modbus(bytes[0:6])

It writes a synthetic capture of a fan controller, recovers the protocol, and writes report.md (every claim linked to Wireshark frame numbers) and a working pyusb driver that encodes values it never saw.

--device lamp (default) is a simple 8-bit device; --device dial shows 32-bit values and packed bitfields:

position     100%  0xa5 | 0x01 | u32le round(value * 1 + 0) | sum8(bytes[0:6])
level        100%  0xa5 | 0x02 | bits[0:4] = round(value * 1 + 0) | 0x00 | sum8(bytes[0:4])

What it can infer

Linear fits must survive leave-one-out cross-checks; otherwise usb-rea falls back to an honest lookup table and says so.

Real device workflow (Linux)

sudo modprobe usbmon
usb-rea capture start -o lamp.pcapng
usb-rea mark -m lamp.pcapng.actions.json "brightness 0%"    # then click it in the vendor app
usb-rea mark -m lamp.pcapng.actions.json "brightness 50%"   # ...repeat for 3+ values per setting
usb-rea capture stop
usb-rea report lamp.pcapng -o report.md
usb-rea scaffold lamp.pcapng -o lamp_driver.py
usb-rea dissector lamp.pcapng -o lamp.lua      # Wireshark dissector for the same protocol

Captured on Windows with USBPcap/Wireshark and no markers? Click each action with a short pause in between, then just list them in order — usb-rea splits the traffic at the pauses:

usb-rea report lamp.pcapng --labels "brightness 0%; brightness 50%; brightness 100%; power off; power on"
usb-rea scaffold lamp.pcapng --labels labels.txt -o lamp_driver.py   # one label per line

(Markers, if you have them, are a JSON list of {"label", "start", "end"} epoch timestamps.)

MCP server

pip install "usb-rea[mcp] @ git+https://github.com/emirmrkaljevic/usb-rea" then add usb-rea mcp as a stdio server. Tools: capture_start, capture_stop, mark_action, diff_actions, report, scaffold_driver, hid_descriptor (decode a HID report descriptor / report payloads), wireshark_dissector, replay_packet (refuses unless the human confirmed). Analysis tools accept the same labels argument as the CLI for marker-free captures.

With uv no install step is needed:

{"mcpServers": {"usb-rea": {"command": "uvx", "args": ["--from", "usb-rea[mcp] @ git+https://github.com/emirmrkaljevic/usb-rea", "usb-rea", "mcp"]}}}

Once usb-rea is on PyPI, --from "usb-rea[mcp]" is enough. The server is also listed on Glama, which builds it from the repo's Dockerfile and checks that it starts and lists its tools.

How it works

1. usb-rea capture start — record traffic (usbmon / USBPcap)
2. usb-rea mark "brightness 50%" — label each action you take in the vendor app
3. usb-rea diff — which bytes change per action, value correlation, checksums, counters
4. usb-rea infer — message templates + evidence report
5. usb-rea scaffold — generate a pyusb driver and replay tests
6. usb-rea dissector — write a Wireshark Lua dissector for the inferred protocol
7. usb-rea replay — send packets to the device (only with explicit confirmation)
8. usb-rea hid — decode a HID report descriptor from a capture (GET_DESCRIPTOR 0x22) or from hex, and decode report payloads
9. usb-rea mcp — the same tools as an MCP server for AI agents

Wireshark dissector

usb-rea dissector capture.pcapng -o lamp.lua turns the inferred protocol into a Wireshark Lua plugin, so you can keep capturing and read the traffic as commands instead of hex:

wireshark -X lua_script:lamp.lua capture.pcapng
tshark -X lua_script:lamp.lua -r capture.pcapng -Y 'usbrea.command == "brightness"'

Each matching packet gets a usbrea tree with the command name, decoded values (usbrea.brightness.value), counters, lookup labels, and a checksum check (usbrea.checksum_ok, with an expert warning on mismatch); the Info column reads brightness 50. It works for bulk, interrupt and control/HID SET_REPORT transfers, from usbmon or USBPcap, and needs no bit library (Wireshark 3.x and 4.x). -n NAME changes the filter prefix. CI runs every generated dissector through tshark.

HID devices

Most RGB keyboards, mice, headsets and LCD gadgets are HID with a vendor-defined page. If the capture includes the report descriptor (start capturing, then replug the device), the report gets a section with every report's ID, size and fields, and each inferred command is tagged with the HID report it travels in. Without a capture:

usb-rea hid /sys/class/hidraw/hidraw0/device/report_descriptor --items
usb-rea hid capture.pcapng --decode "10ff0d1d000000" --type Output

Roadmap

• pcap/pcapng parser (usbmon + USBPcap)
• action markers and per-action diffing
• checksum detection (sum8, xor8, neg/inv sum8, CRC8, CRC16 variants)
• evidence-backed protocol report
• driver scaffolding (pyusb, bulk/interrupt + control/HID SET_REPORT)
• confirmed replay
• MCP server
• rolling counters, multi-byte (16/32-bit LE/BE) values, lookup tables, multi-value actions
• packed bitfields
• validation against documented protocols (liquidctl, rivalcfg)
• HID report descriptor decoding (usb-rea hid), with captured commands mapped to their HID reports
• emulated-device CI (dummy_hcd + configfs HID; script in scripts/gadget_e2e.sh)
• real-hardware case studies
• multi-packet transactions (write + apply), including checksums over earlier packets
• state machines (request/response handshakes)

Legal

Reverse engineering for interoperability is permitted (EU Directive 2009/24/EC Art. 6, US DMCA §1201(f)). usb-rea only analyzes traffic of devices you own and never redistributes vendor code.

License

MIT