Companies and malware authors use packaging tools to distribute products and payloads as Python bytecode (.pyc) files, often thinking that their secret logic will be unreadable by humans. Using a simple example, we will teach curious developers how to interpret and decompile Python bytecode by hand. Finally, we will discuss challenges and solutions of automating Python decompilation.

This talk is targeted towards intrepid intermediate Python developers who are looking to take a look under the hood, and reverse engineers who are looking to add Python binaries to their repertoire. Unlike previous bytecode-oriented talks at PyCon, which primarily focus on Python's execution model, this talk is primarily interested in recovering Python source code from Python bytecode.