Reverse Engineering a Furby

Revenge is a dish best served cold. So it goes with presents like Furby. This reverse engineering project is not only fun, but pretty smart, exposing the power of this evil automaton.

This past semester I’ve been working on a directed study at my university with Prof. Wil Robertson reverse engineering embedded devices. After a couple of months looking at a passport scanner, one of my friends jokingly suggested I hack a Furby, the notoriously annoying toy of late 1990s fame. Everyone laughed, and we all moved on with our lives. However, the joke didn’t stop there.Within two weeks, this same friend said they had a present for me. And that’s how I started reverse engineering a Furby.