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IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

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Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#61

Post by jmillikin »

tralarpa wrote: post #54
Test0129 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not going to hold my breath on extending their hobbyist offerings. I own a copy of IDA (legally). It was an absolute pain to purchase and it seems that a large portion of their margins are dedicated to piracy control. I won't detail the process...but it seems unusually personal. If I had to guess they will expand their decompilers (the actual flagship project). It will be years before Ghidra + a community catch…

> It will be years before Ghidra Can you elaborate? I would really like to see what the HexRay decompiler does better (or worse) than Ghidra, but I am too poor to buy it (and dogbolt.org is not interactive, so I cannot edit function signatures to "help" the decompiler etc.). Is it better in general, for a specific programming language or platform (e.g. C++, Windows), or for a specific use case (e.g. obfuscated code)?…

The IDA decompiler is just generally more complete and more polished than Ghidra for the architectures it targets.

One issue with Ghidra's that I keep hitting is its poor support for amd64 SIMD. There's a good example at https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/issues/249>:

  0000000000000000 :
     0: f3 0f 1e fa           endbr64 
     4: 0f c6 ca 1b           shufps $0x1b,%xmm2,%xmm1
     8: 0f 58 c1              addps  %xmm1,%xmm0
     b: c3                    retq
IDA produces great decompilation:

  __m128 __fastcall intrinsics(__m128 a1, __m128 a2, __m128 a3) {
    return _mm_add_ps(a1, _mm_shuffle_ps(a2, a3, 27));
  }
The Ghidra output is a mishmash of CONCAT pseudo-macros.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#62

Post by arsome »

tsujamin wrote: post #58
gnfargbl wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopper is worth a look, also: https://www.hopperapp.com/ . Very reasonably priced.

Hopper is my go-to for light reveng or macOS binaries, Ghidra for Windows mainly because you can refine your typing until the decompiler window becomes very readable. as an aside - When I was taught Ghidra the trainer said "in IDA you spend most of your time in the disassembly graph, in Ghidra I rarely leave the decompiler"

Interesting, I found Ghidras decompiler much less capable than IDA's. It generated incorrect or partial output far too often and the code generated was always extremely verbose, much less concise than IDA's, though this was shortly after the public release of Ghidra, things may have changed since.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#63

Post by batch12 »

pseudo0 wrote: post #8

Hopefully this works out for Hex-Rays, allowing them to invest more into developing IDA and expanding their low-cost product offerings. The general sentiment I have seen among people doing SRE is that IDA is rapidly losing market share to Ghidra. While it excels in some areas, the licenses are pricy even for tech employers, and entirely out of reach for students or colleges. It's hard to convince an employer to fork…

I have forced myself to move to other tools like Ghidra, x32dbg, ollydbg, etc. I haven't settled yet on a perfect workflow, but I have found that most of my needs are met without having to launch IDA nowadays.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#64

Post by crote »

pseudo0 wrote: post #8

Hopefully this works out for Hex-Rays, allowing them to invest more into developing IDA and expanding their low-cost product offerings. The general sentiment I have seen among people doing SRE is that IDA is rapidly losing market share to Ghidra. While it excels in some areas, the licenses are pricy even for tech employers, and entirely out of reach for students or colleges. It's hard to convince an employer to fork…

There have been acquired by a venture capital investor, and the press release mainly focuses on their rapid growth and "extraordinary margins".

I think it is safe to assume that offering cheaper products will be the last thing they are going to do.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#65

Post by rychco »

This makes me hopeful that users will switch to Binary Ninja. I picked up Binja a while ago (because it’s actually affordable for an individual) & haven’t felt any need to return to IDA. There’s also Rizin which seems pretty robust from what I’ve seen (haven’t tried it myself), & of course there’s also Ghidra. IDA isn’t the only effective disassembler in town anymore.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#66

Post by gruez »

sirsinsalot wrote: post #52
rfoo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hilarious that pirating a (DRM-less!) software is much easier than purchasing it. Even if you had the money and really want to buy it.

The pirates probably used a pirated IDA to pirate it

There’s basically no DRM on IDA/hex-rays though.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#67

Post by megous »

tralarpa wrote: post #54
Test0129 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not going to hold my breath on extending their hobbyist offerings. I own a copy of IDA (legally). It was an absolute pain to purchase and it seems that a large portion of their margins are dedicated to piracy control. I won't detail the process...but it seems unusually personal. If I had to guess they will expand their decompilers (the actual flagship project). It will be years before Ghidra + a community catch…

> It will be years before Ghidra Can you elaborate? I would really like to see what the HexRay decompiler does better (or worse) than Ghidra, but I am too poor to buy it (and dogbolt.org is not interactive, so I cannot edit function signatures to "help" the decompiler etc.). Is it better in general, for a specific programming language or platform (e.g. C++, Windows), or for a specific use case (e.g. obfuscated code)?…

OTOH, I was able to add decompiler support for a new architecture (or1k) to Ghidra in two weekends just by following examples and without pre-existent Ghidra internals knowlege and without writing any Java code. To me that's an awesome flexibility.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#68

Post by throwup »

batch12 wrote: post #63
pseudo0 wrote: post #8

Hopefully this works out for Hex-Rays, allowing them to invest more into developing IDA and expanding their low-cost product offerings. The general sentiment I have seen among people doing SRE is that IDA is rapidly losing market share to Ghidra. While it excels in some areas, the licenses are pricy even for tech employers, and entirely out of reach for students or colleges. It's hard to convince an employer to fork…

I have forced myself to move to other tools like Ghidra, x32dbg, ollydbg, etc. I haven't settled yet on a perfect workflow, but I have found that most of my needs are met without having to launch IDA nowadays.

Hasn't ollydbg development stalled? What do you use it for that x64dbg can't also do?
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