Side by side
FirmWire vs Medusa
Both stand on reverse engineering tools. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan LinuxSelf-hosted
FirmWire combines emulation, fuzzing, debugging, scripting, and firmware injection for supported baseband images. Its Linux-only setup and documented limitations matter when planning research workflows.
Visit FirmWire Free plan LinuxSelf-hosted
Choose Medusa if you operate Apache Cassandra and need self-managed backups, verification, and cluster restore options across multiple storage destinations. Look elsewhere if your Cassandra deployment uses multiple data-folder directories, which Medusa does not support.
Visit MedusaThe facts
| FirmWire | Medusa | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Not published | Not published |
| Runs on | Linux, Self-hosted | Linux, Self-hosted |
| Lowest paid plan | Not published | Free or on request |
| Plans published | None | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | github.com | github.com |
| On reverse engineering tools | #37 of 73 | #33 of 73 |
FirmWire: what it does well
- Free BSD-3 licensed software
- AFL++ baseband fuzzing support
- GDB interactive debugging
- Snapshot restoration support
- C module injection modkit
What to know first
- Supports only a subset of firmware images
- MediaTek analysis needs custom Ghidra patches
- MediaTek snapshotting is described as hacky
- Public release omits some research-paper functionality
Medusa: what it does well
- Supports both full and differential backups.
- Offers single-node and cluster-wide restore options.
- Stores backups locally or in several cloud and S3-compatible destinations.
- Verifies backup completion, manifests, files, and hashes.
- Retention can be set by backup age or count.
What to know first
- Does not support deployments with multiple Cassandra data-folder directories.
- Requires Python 3.9 or newer.
- Runs as a self-hosted Linux tool rather than a hosted service.
Alternatives to FirmWire Alternatives to Medusa The whole list