In my experience GLM 5.1 has been excellent when paired with IDA Pro (DeepSeek v4 pro comes in close second, Kimi straight up refuses). Claude can only do reverse engineering if you throw it into some sort of hero/saviour mode then gradually pivot into red team (though it gets easily tripped).
Among the inexpensive models (and I include Grok 4.3 in this list), GLM 5.1 really sticks out!
On my personal test bench, when compared to other inexpensive models, GLM 5.1 provides the answers that I would consider most complete or satisfying (these are subjects that I consider myself an expert in). The answers tend to be more comprehensive, nuanced, and include references that I would consider the correct ones (if given access to web search).
I also find it a joy to code with, somewhere between Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.6 (have not tested Opus 4.7 yet).
This is so strange. I do a ton of RE with Claude, Codex, and sometimes Deepseek, GLM, and Kimi. I don’t have difficulty getting any of them to use IDA or otherwise decompile things.
There is one important difference, which is that Claude and Codex will both refuse if I ask them to touch anything related to security. But so long as I’m just studying algorithms and things like that, they’re totally fine with it.
That said, Codex especially will sometimes randomly give me a cybersecurity warning and stop responding. It’s random but happens maybe 2-3 times per day if I’m doing heavy reverse engineering work. Claude is much less fussy unless, once again, you’re explicitly trying to touch anything related to licenses, passwords, etc.
Yes, GLM 5.1 is surprisingly good! Particularly for long-horizon Agentic tasks, with 100+ available tools. It really shocked me in a good way when it was able to complete a long run with 50+ steps and not fall into a loop along the way.
