Live data from Hacker News

Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

nsa.gov

71–80 of 425 posts

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#73

Aaaaaand: https://twitter.com/hackerfantastic/status/11030878690637045...

Though the obvious explanation for that is that it was an intentional backdoor, that honestly looks more to me like a legitimate oversight than a backdoor. I think an actual backdoor would be a lot more subtle and clever than that. Especially since this way, absolutely anyone could exploit it (it's just Java Debug Wire Protocol). Also, you have to explicitly run it in debug mode for this to happen, which probably onl…

I also don't think it's a backdoor, but the best way to hide a backdoor is to make it look like a mistake.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#74
post #6

It appears that it isn't actually available as of now. Apparently, the NSA is going to release it at RSA Conference 2019, so it'll probably actually be published within the next couple of days.

The RSA conference is currently ongoing and the NSA talk was today. Actually, it should be over just about now.

Is the NSA talk about this available online?

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#75
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a funny situation, though: decompilation probably should cost a small fortune. If you're in a line of work that needs it, the quality of your decompiler is probably a huge factor in how valuable an hour of your time is, and many [most?] fields where people routinely decompile stuff are very highly compensated. IDA has always had a weirdly low price point given the bill rates of people who use it, and it's intere…

It depends on what you're doing. I imagine a lot of people use IDA pro for modding video games, which often/usually provides no monetary compensation. Perhaps they would benefit from some type of "free/cheap for noncommercial use" license?

There is a free (much less capable) version of IDA.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#76
post #66

From someone who does binary reverse engineering full time, in my experience, BinaryNinja, Hopper, radare2, etc are toys compared to IDA Pro + Hex Rays Decompiler. The quality of the results and the features supported are unmatched... until now. I haven’t spent too much time with ghidra yet but it’s the real deal. The output of the decompiler looks alright (not complete garbage like I’ve seen with other tools). Even…

Leaving the decompiler aside, for core disassembly features, in what ways is modern IDA far ahead of its competitors?

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#77
post #66

From someone who does binary reverse engineering full time, in my experience, BinaryNinja, Hopper, radare2, etc are toys compared to IDA Pro + Hex Rays Decompiler. The quality of the results and the features supported are unmatched... until now. I haven’t spent too much time with ghidra yet but it’s the real deal. The output of the decompiler looks alright (not complete garbage like I’ve seen with other tools). Even…

I’m a casual bystander who has only played with these tools, but I’ve been interested in this field for a long time. Do you think that radare2’s UI is a step forward? I like the Unix-esque command line and how composable everything feels. IDA (and now Ghidra) feel like an IDE, while radare2 feels more like Vim.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#78
post #56

I'm definitely excited for this, considering I couldn't fork out the thousand of dollars needed for using IDA. I can't really justify that on a small hobby project (reverse engineering games).

If it’s a hobby project why don’t you just pirate it? Honest question.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#80
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Download from the NSA without open source software... anyone else virtualizing three layers deep to get to this?

I'd expect most people who use software like this to be using things like Qubes OS anyway?

Honestly, not really.

I wonder if it will make it's way to FLARE.

Post reply on HN