Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#251

Post by iup » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 8:51 AM UTC

subjectsigma wrote: post #203

I just don't understand the doubt and hate. It's perfectly reasonable to distrust the NSA in most cases, but look at the context - the NSA has a huge brain drain and PR problem. They desperately need qualified people to start trusting and applying to them again. Does anyone seriously think they would try to backdoor security researchers in such a stupidly obvious way? I was actually at the RSA talk where they release…

Well, I would apply if they allowed non-US citizens to do so.

I have no ties to this shitty post-Soviet country, just let me apply for god's sake.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#252

Post by ngold » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #247

Tepix wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that noone is yelling "socialism" yet. Tax paid competition for existing commercial products. Isn't that considered evil/wrong by pure capitalists?

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Thanks for the link. That's a great reference point I did not know about.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#253

Post by JetSpiegel » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #245

strictnein wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite what @HackerFantastic is going on about, sloppy remote debugging capabilities enabled with a debug flag isn't an RCE.

It enables remote code execution, that's what RCE stands for.

It's a compile flag, it is not enabled by default.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#254

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:19 AM UTC

justinjlynn wrote: post #163

idlewords wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just reverse-engineer it!

No, you almost certainly promised not to do so when you bought a licence.

[deleted]

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#255

Post by rock_artist » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:30 AM UTC

arthurcolle wrote: post #7

maxfan8 wrote: 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.

It is available here: https://ghidra-sre.org/

maybe the NSA don't like non-US citizens using open-sourced software :)

this is what I get -

403 ERROR The request could not be satisfied. Request blocked.

Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront) Request ID: i_Sa-b1Fj2C4ZAUtBsmAp-7mVg9LerDTlD9t1_00ex4fQyCUhrYvdw==

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#256

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:31 AM UTC

pkaye wrote: post #74

pacificmint wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't know if there's a video, but here are the slides: https://published-prd.lanyonevents.com/published/rsaus19/ses...

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#257

Post by hatsunearu » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:33 AM UTC

Oh yeah, for those who are wondering; there's another NSA project where they made a tool that's a direct competitor with a product that's "out there": https://github.com/redhawksdr

The competitor in question is GNU Radio.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#258

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:37 AM UTC

justinjlynn wrote: post #240

smokeyj wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But again, my point is: IDA costs a lot less than its place in the market suggests it should. Sounds like every developer working on an open source stack.

Well, now the market is saying that such a tool should be open sourced and well, now it is.

I wouldn't say the market is doing that, government funded tool being released as FOSS is opposite to "the market".

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#259

Post by tatoalo » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:40 AM UTC

ramon wrote: post #85

does Ghidra work for APK files, it would be cool if it also worked with mobile projects.

Direct APK doesn't work at the moment (I've tried with 3 apks), just unzip it and work with the DEX file.

Re: Ghidra, NSA's reverse-engineering tool

#260

Post by pbhjpbhj » Wed, Mar 06, 2019, 9:43 AM UTC

OskarS wrote: post #250

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it is open source, I might worry about using an open source tool from the NSA.

Yeah, my mouse was hovering over the download button eager to test it out when my brain suddenly went "wait, don't do that!" If you wanna run this thing, you should probably build it from source yourself (don't trust the binaries) and even then run it in a pretty well sandboxed virtual machine. I would not be surprised at all if the NSA left some surprises in that thing.

Maybe it's all just an elaborate recruitment ad. :)