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Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

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Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#41

Post by heinrich5991 »

davrosthedalek wrote: post #40
inferiorhuman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are more alternatives to IDA Pro. Hopper Disassembler is one. Binary Ninja (binja) is another. Sure, but radare2 is open source which cuts both ways I suppose. IDA feels significantly more polished than r2, but I've had fun implementing a not-so-common-anymore architecture as a set of r2 plugins. There's also the free version of IDA (x86 only though).

I think the new free version of IDA also supports x86_64 now.

https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/order.shtml

>IDA Starter: supports more than 20 processor families, including the popular x86 and ARM processors.

>IDA Starter does not support 64-bit files.

Doesn't look like it does.

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#42

Post by Hugie »

stevekemp wrote: post #14
voltagex_ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reverse engineering has been a constant interest for me but I've never managed to get it to "click" for me. I don't particularly need the skill, but it's one I'd like to have (at least to the extent of being able to do simple crackmes).

My earliest exposure to computers was the ZX Spectrum, an 8-bit home-computer from the 80s, which was insanely populare in the UK. Having few games, and little budget for more, most of the kids around would swap home-copied games. I used to have fun removing protection, or hacking the games for infinite lives. At the time I was 12-15 and it was very much a case of trial or error. Assuming a game started with 3 lives…

My first and only hacks were at the age of 12 where i "patched" the copy protection keywords from the first XWing in 1993 [0]. I only knew 1 password and searched for it in a hex editor. I found it and recognized a pattern with similar words. Replacing them with the Ascii Space resulted in "press return to pass" password checks :D Damn i was proud.

At the same age, i rewrote the Story Text of "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1991)[1] via hex and "Try and Errored" all Ascii combinations to develop my own Ascii chart. You can imagine what a 12 year old rewrote a love story to... my older brother was quite happy :D

I later tried to patch Dune2 Level files to create my own but did not understand a thing.

Now i write medical software and sometimes feel the same ;)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_X-Wing_(video_game_...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Robin_Hood_(...

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#43

Post by gmueckl »

dpwm wrote: post #29
JepZ wrote: post #28

I wish there would be some App/Website similar to DragonBox [1] but to learn assembler instead of math ;-) [1]: https://dragonbox.com/products/algebra-12

TIS-100 by Zachtronics is a game based around a very small instruction set assembly language on an interesting architecture. Shenzhen I/O is also meant to be good, but I haven't played it. Neither are even close in complexity or sheer number of instructions to x86, but then I get the sense that x86 tends to put people off assembly in a way that simpler architectures don't.

TIS-100 is a neat programming puzzle game. A lot of the programming challenges revolve around the limited nature of the CPU nodes in each system (two registers, no memory, very limited space for assembler source code). It's a fun game if you love to program. However, I found the later challenges somehow too frustrating and I haven't finished the game.

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#44

Post by guitmz »

heinrich5991 wrote: post #41
davrosthedalek wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the new free version of IDA also supports x86_64 now.

https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/order.shtml >IDA Starter: supports more than 20 processor families, including the popular x86 and ARM processors. >IDA Starter does not support 64-bit files. Doesn't look like it does.

IDA Freeware version 7 has the following limitations:

1. Only for non-commercial use 2. Without technical support 3. Only supports x64 code

It DOES support x64. I am using it.

You can download it at: https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/support/download_freew...

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#45

Post by zellyn »

I learned to use Radare2 a bit during our company's last CTF, and while it's super awesome in terms of capabilities, the GUI story is terrible: if you start investigating, it seems there's a long debris trail of half-done GUIs where someone said, “Hey, this would be easier if there were a GUI”. Even the visual mode inside radare2 has completely different commands from the non-GUI mode, and you almost certainly need to switch back and forth.

If radare2 found a couple of undergrad usability students to contribute and then focused on consistency and bug-fixing, it would be able to live up to its truly amazing potential.

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#46

Post by Pourliver »

sguav wrote: post #30

I discovered Radare2 some years ago, and found that Cutter strongly lowers the learning curve of r2. On that note, I used to play (as a n00b) to some crackmes and ctf, but not having kept up to date I can't find a live replacement for crackmes.de (or .cf today...still an archive though). Any suggestions of current resources to "play" with r2 and Cutter?

I don't know those websites, but I can recommand something in the same genre : pwnable.tw

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#47

Post by jjoonathan »

burfog wrote: post #27
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, they didn't do group subscriptions; you buy named licenses for each team member, and they're pretty unpleasant about the process.

They won't do unlimited licenses or subscriptions at all, but you can get group licenses (with license server) and support subscriptions. Your three choices are: a. license server b. licensed to a specific person c. licensed to a specific computer They are indeed pretty unpleasant about the process. They've been burned by license violations.

More than unpleasant. I bought a license, missed the (2 week or something?) deadline to install/activate, and their support ghosted me, leaving my repeated pleas to open another window unanswered. $1k down the drain.

I'd take 'em to court if I knew how.

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#48

Post by souprock »

zerr wrote: post #19
souprock wrote: post #2

Cutter is "A Qt and C++ GUI for radare2". There are more alternatives to IDA Pro. Hopper Disassembler is one. Binary Ninja (binja) is another. Here is an independent review of Binary Ninja: https://www.trailofbits.com/research-and-development/binja/ Here is the project itself: https://binary.ninja/ I happen to know most of the people involved in Binary Ninja. They do great work. They really understand security and th…

> Citizenship is a job requirement. Do you do disassembly for government?

as a contractor

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#49

Post by souprock »

crankybear1337 wrote: post #35
veganjay wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a tricky art. It's helpful to learn some of the basics such as how variables are passed to a function on the stack for x86 or as registers with x64. Beyond that it takes practice. Things that have helped me are writing c code and dissassembling it, stepping through code with GDB and working on crackmes and CTFs. For radare2 in particular, this tutorial was helpful: https://leotindall.com/tutorial/an-intro-to-x86…

Yeah, writing simple C programs using various constructs (switch/if/for statements, structs, different APIs, etc.) and then looking at the produced assembly is a good way to learn. Another thing I like to do is to rewrite complex parts of the disassembly in pseudo-C (though radare has an option to do this automatically), which makes the overall logic easier to see (and is, of course, the entire point of decompilers l…

This works. Be sure to try different compilers and optimization levels.

You can become a better programmer this way. You start to get a real feel for what the compiler can and can't optimize. For example, you can see how a do...while loop is usually the best kind of loop, but without seeing the assembly you might assume they are all the same.

Re: Cutter – A Qt and C++ GUI for Radare2 reverse engineering framework

#50

Post by crudd »

sguav wrote: post #30

I discovered Radare2 some years ago, and found that Cutter strongly lowers the learning curve of r2. On that note, I used to play (as a n00b) to some crackmes and ctf, but not having kept up to date I can't find a live replacement for crackmes.de (or .cf today...still an archive though). Any suggestions of current resources to "play" with r2 and Cutter?

http://crackmes.one/ is new and updated. It also includes all the old crackmes.de challenges.
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