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Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

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Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#31

Post by Andoryuuta »

atemerev wrote: post #17

Binary Ninja is a fine piece of software, but it is more ethical to advertise this article as "nice reversing tutorial included with said software", because not-so-hidden shameless advertisement for it is worse.

IMO, I really don't see this as "shameless advertisement". As far as I know, there are really only three worthwhile static analysis tools available right now, Radare2(free), Binary Ninja($99-$300), and IDA pro($500-$5000+). Using Radare2 at the beginning can be very daunting if you are new to RE. IDA is so expensive you can really only obtain it legally through your workplace or college/university, or if you're willing to spend a very large sum of money. That really only leaves Binary Ninja.

With that said there is nothing stopping people from starting with radare2 if they wish to, there is a lot of great tutorials for it available online. But in this case the recommendation of using Binary Ninja was one which the author (Nitrax) made because "due to its low cost .. compared to the functionalities provided", the author even further added "A demo version is available for free and should be enough for beginners."

I can understand the insistence on free and open-source software, but a lot of OSS tools in many fields have simply not caught up to their paid counterparts in all aspects. And to me, it feels much like calling someone a shill for saying "Make sure you use a good drill for this" instead of supplying references to a free & open 3D printable drill schematic.

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#32

Post by tuxloper »

tempfs wrote: post #27
tokenizerrr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idiot who voluntarily breaks their web browser, then complains that it's broken. Bye!

Context: Visiting a website written by/for reverse engineering, a subset of Hacking. Assertion: Visiting a hacking website with Javascript disabled is a bad thing. Hmmm...

This site works without javascript. If you block tags however you won't see anything.

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#33

Post by saurik »

Andoryuuta wrote: post #31
atemerev wrote: post #17

Binary Ninja is a fine piece of software, but it is more ethical to advertise this article as "nice reversing tutorial included with said software", because not-so-hidden shameless advertisement for it is worse.

IMO, I really don't see this as "shameless advertisement". As far as I know, there are really only three worthwhile static analysis tools available right now, Radare2(free), Binary Ninja($99-$300), and IDA pro($500-$5000+). Using Radare2 at the beginning can be very daunting if you are new to RE. IDA is so expensive you can really only obtain it legally through your workplace or college/university, or if you're willi…

(Hopper is also $99.)

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#34

Post by Andoryuuta »

saurik wrote: post #33
Andoryuuta wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, I really don't see this as "shameless advertisement". As far as I know, there are really only three worthwhile static analysis tools available right now, Radare2(free), Binary Ninja($99-$300), and IDA pro($500-$5000+). Using Radare2 at the beginning can be very daunting if you are new to RE. IDA is so expensive you can really only obtain it legally through your workplace or college/university, or if you're willi…

(Hopper is also $99.)

Ah, yeah. I totally forgot about hopper. I've never used it, but it looks nice, especially for Objective C and Swift.

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#35

Post by 520794 »

bwidlar wrote: post #25
dylz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0) that's most definitely not blank page, I have noscript and it does load content. 1) what kind of response is this?

Using JSBlocker here. no content. Just doing some futile effort to show web developers that to get some basic text without javascript is cool. Of course, do whatever you want with your site. Maybe I was a bit rude.

Not rude if it was correct.

But this blogspot website works fine without javascript. Also, for the ones that do not, it is easy to dump any blogger (blogspot) website to "basic text" using netcat, etc. No javascript needed.

The problem must be in the blocker you are using or something else.

imo, blockers that work via the browser are not the optimal way to retrieve basic text.

You are still using a massive browser which you do not need to retrieve a page of basic text, which can easily be accomplished by a smaller, more simple program.

Using a small tcp client like netcat and saving the page to a (temporary) file is one way to do it.

If you then want to view the basic text by opening the file in a large, complex, ad-sponsored, web browser that is optimized for running javascript and automatically connecting to third party servers, you can do that.

Or you could use something simpler. You have a choice.

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#36

Post by [deleted] »

tyingq wrote: post #13
NikolaeVarius wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is effectively aliasing RE to regular expression. None of the links use "RE" as an acronym. Regex/Regexp has always been the accepted acronym.

They do though. RE is a python library, an Erlang library, there's a reference to perlre, clojure calls it re, etc. Then there's the C lib pcre. Also Google chooses to alias certain things for a reason.

[deleted]

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#37

Post by eriknstr »

lol768 wrote: post #30
strictnein wrote: post #9

After brushing up on this, if you're looking for something "fun" to work through, the NSA's 2016 Codebreaker challenge is good, granted you have a .edu email address (only US .edu too, unfortunately). https://codebreaker.ltsnet.net/challenge I think they're going to be keeping the 2016 version up for a while longer. They generally start a new one in September each year.

Damn, too bad they don't accept .ac.uk addresses :( I feel like there should be a standardised way to ensure users are students/affiliated with an educational institution (maybe an international federation on top of SAML a la the UK Access Management Federation). I guess at the end of the day the NSA want students in the US, who are likely US citizens and thus eligible for a job.

Not a standard but https://github.com/leereilly/swot comes to mind.

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#38

Post by doktrin »

orthogonal :

I honestly wish CMU would release the lectures and full class materials for 15-213 (the course most typically associated with the bomb lab mentioned here). The lectures combined with the accompanying text and labs form a masterpiece, and it's a shame the community at large can't take better advantage of it. It's like SICP for systems : that effing good.

The tests, however, are just awful. Those can safely be dumpstered.

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#39

Post by kingbirdy »

doktrin wrote: post #38

orthogonal : I honestly wish CMU would release the lectures and full class materials for 15-213 (the course most typically associated with the bomb lab mentioned here). The lectures combined with the accompanying text and labs form a masterpiece, and it's a shame the community at large can't take better advantage of it. It's like SICP for systems : that effing good. The tests, however, are just awful. Those can safel…

It sounds like you've been through the course - why not release it yourself?

Re: Reverse engineering guide for beginners: Methodology and tools

#40

Post by Vera527 »

lol768 wrote: post #30
strictnein wrote: post #9

After brushing up on this, if you're looking for something "fun" to work through, the NSA's 2016 Codebreaker challenge is good, granted you have a .edu email address (only US .edu too, unfortunately). https://codebreaker.ltsnet.net/challenge I think they're going to be keeping the 2016 version up for a while longer. They generally start a new one in September each year.

Damn, too bad they don't accept .ac.uk addresses :( I feel like there should be a standardised way to ensure users are students/affiliated with an educational institution (maybe an international federation on top of SAML a la the UK Access Management Federation). I guess at the end of the day the NSA want students in the US, who are likely US citizens and thus eligible for a job.

I see what you did there. Good luck bypassing the filter.
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