What is "reverse-engineered"

Usage examples of "reverse-engineered".

You could even get X-rated tapes for the tape machines that were manufactured there—rip-offs of Japanese designs, reverse-engineered and made in their own fraternal socialist factories.

It was a programming technique that had been reverse-engineered from the sort of psychotic mental blocks that otherwise perfectly normal people had been observed invariably to develop when elected to high political office.