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IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

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Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#81

Post by arsome »

hirvi74 wrote: post #80
kurisufag wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, I downloaded a cracked copy off TPB (or some such place) when I was in high school for reversing video games, and I've never seen a legitimate reason to upgrade or get a real license. It's really a testament to the robustness of the software.

The people who worked on IDA should be teaching classes on development. I do not think I have ever encountered a single bug in my usage (obviously they exist as with almost any system of moderate complexity). It's just a rock solid application.

Their debugger used to be pretty buggy, just after the 5.0 or 5.1 release I'd crash it on a regular basis. More recent versions have improved this though and they offer some really slick features in the debugger than other tools can't even do.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#82

Post by Beached »

luma wrote: post #75
Thaxll wrote: post #70

Not sure why Hex-Rays spends so much time fighting piracy and making the purchase a very complicated process, it's a lost battle, there will always be pirated copy of IDA, stop fighting it and embrace it to make a better offering.

It seems like a completely senseless waste of their efforts, given the nature of the product they are selling and the user community who knows how to use such a thing.

they need to go the binja route and just give away a minimal version for free, stopped of the fancy features and scripting. we use binja at work, which means a dozen enterprise licenses, because binja was easily usable legally for free. we all love ida, but licensing is a pita with them. so we never bothered.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#83

Post by self_awareness »

hirvi74 wrote: post #80
kurisufag wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reference, I downloaded a cracked copy off TPB (or some such place) when I was in high school for reversing video games, and I've never seen a legitimate reason to upgrade or get a real license. It's really a testament to the robustness of the software.

The people who worked on IDA should be teaching classes on development. I do not think I have ever encountered a single bug in my usage (obviously they exist as with almost any system of moderate complexity). It's just a rock solid application.

Structure editor sometimes bugs out and removes all items from the view, together with comments that serve as help text. The window is completely empty.

Also this Python detection tool that needs to be executed prior the first run didn't support python 3.10 at some point -- they've did version detection based on the filename that detected 3.10 as 3.1 (windows9-style version detection). Not sure what's the case with recent IDA versions, because I'm using Ghidra since a long time now.

But overall I agree, I would never suggest IDA when being asked about an example of a buggy software.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#84

Post by Beached »

bitexploder wrote: post #78
dwheeler wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 out cash for IDA licenses when new employees are asking to use Ghidra, because that's what they use at home and at school. I don't hav…

Ghidra is just better overall now. Full stop. IDA still does some things better, but Ghidra is a great tool and most people still on IDA are there because of their existing tooling, scripts, and experience with the software. Starting from scratch, Ghidra would win. Been using IDA for like 16 years now.

ooof, ghidra is great because it is free and works, but I wouldn't call it better. I'd still choose ida or binja over ghidra for work. IDC about license cost, I care about ease of use, and binja wins on ease of use for me (and. alot of people I talk to)

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#85

Post by arsome »

Beached wrote: post #82
luma wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a completely senseless waste of their efforts, given the nature of the product they are selling and the user community who knows how to use such a thing.

they need to go the binja route and just give away a minimal version for free, stopped of the fancy features and scripting. we use binja at work, which means a dozen enterprise licenses, because binja was easily usable legally for free. we all love ida, but licensing is a pita with them. so we never bothered.

They do have a free version of IDA, the problem is most people who use it want the decompiler these days and that costs big.

Looks like they've actually added the "cloud-based x64 decompiler" to the free offering now, so maybe if you're not working with 32-bit code and not working with anything too sensitive that could be of use.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#86

Post by Beached »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #7

Does anyone know what impact if any the release of Ghidra had on Hex-Rays? IDA never really accommodated to the hobbyist, so I wonder did it have any impact on the commercial side of things apart from the IDA Home release?

in my world of embedded reverse engineering, very few people use ghidra for their daily work. we use ida or binja or vivisect. we all know how to use it more or less at a hobbiest level, we even teach it at cons and trainings because it's free and people have heard of it.

but for reeeeaaal work, that needs to be done by the deadline, it rarely gets considered.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#87

Post by rjzzleep »

Beached wrote: post #84
bitexploder wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghidra is just better overall now. Full stop. IDA still does some things better, but Ghidra is a great tool and most people still on IDA are there because of their existing tooling, scripts, and experience with the software. Starting from scratch, Ghidra would win. Been using IDA for like 16 years now.

ooof, ghidra is great because it is free and works, but I wouldn't call it better. I'd still choose ida or binja over ghidra for work. IDC about license cost, I care about ease of use, and binja wins on ease of use for me (and. alot of people I talk to)

I think a lot of the people that say how much better ghidra is, just started reversing and use the decompiler a lot. The workflow and UX of IDA is so much better.

I guess there are a lot of people that just click around in the UI but for a keyboard based workflow, Ghidra has a lot of catching up to do even to IDA 4.x.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#88

Post by gjm11 »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #40
WirelessGigabit wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He sold majority share to an investment group. So every button will now become an in-app purchase. Function decompilations will cost in-app currencies. And today they’re offering the pro-pack. 10,000 decomp units for $1,200 bucks. Of course now they can devalue the value of a unit at will.

AFAIU Ilfak is planning retirement. Retirement and tired have the same root. He got in this business pretty much accidentally and never wanted to become the most hated person in wannabe cracker circles.

> Retirement and tired have the same root.

This does not appear to be true.

"retire" is from French retirer, to pull (something) back -- as e.g. a general might do with troops that need to stop an attack.

"tire" (verb) goes back to Old English tiorian, and its etymology before that is not known and in particular doesn't seem to come from French "tirer" or its Latin antecedents.

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#89

Post by Beached »

rychco wrote: post #65

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.

I see people going to binja in waves. not only is it easier to acquire, but it's freaking good and intuitive to use.

they cater to the hobbiest market to, with a free version that will honestly work for soooo many things. I don't understand why people use ghidra honestly. but hey, nsa has some good pr people

Re: IDA cybersecurity software provider Hex-Rays acquired

#90

Post by Beached »

userbinator wrote: post #5
willk wrote: post #2

I hope this doesn't lead to stagnation in the product with ever increasing licensing costs. IDA is expensive enough as it is.

I think they lost a lot of potential customers after NSA released Ghidra.

binja had more to do with loss of enterprise customers than ghidra. I know maybe 100 professional sres and none of them use ghidra on a daily basis. most use binja now, and others admit they only use ida, because they already have it and know how to use it. they also admit if they have to move to a place without ida licenses, they would be happy to go binja full time if that's what their teammates use
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