Systems and methods for reverse engineering access control include determining a set of potential access control target methods, functions and/or subroutines that may be used in software applications. A software application is then analyzed to determine if the access control targets are present in the software application. If an access control target is used by the software application, then the access control policy for the target is analyzed to determine the roles, privileges, or rights that are necessary to successfully execute the access control target. A report is then generated that provides information about the access control policy elements actually used by the software application.