A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#1

Post by luu » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering
emily.st

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#2

Post by Kenji » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 10:24 PM UTC

This is slightly offtopic but I find the vulgar example passwords amusing. I used to use a lot of vulgar language in my code but when you have to commit it and other people (e.g. your supervisor) read it, you have to be more careful.

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#3

Post by pavel_lishin » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 10:30 PM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #2

This is slightly offtopic but I find the vulgar example passwords amusing. I used to use a lot of vulgar language in my code but when you have to commit it and other people (e.g. your supervisor) read it, you have to be more careful.

I usually try to make my passwords obscene if I suspect that they're being stored in something that can be reverted back to plain text, or if I suspect that someone may force me to give it to them (e.g., clueless IT team).

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#4

Post by ics » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 10:46 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #3

Kenji wrote: post #2

This is slightly offtopic but I find the vulgar example passwords amusing. I used to use a lot of vulgar language in my code but when you have to commit it and other people (e.g. your supervisor) read it, you have to be more careful.

I usually try to make my passwords obscene if I suspect that they're being stored in something that can be reverted back to plain text, or if I suspect that someone may force me to give it to them (e.g., clueless IT team).

'------------...IsSomethingNobodyShouldHaveToRead', get as offensive as necessary and then include this 36-character salt. Like that?

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#5

Post by jkubicek » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 11:03 PM UTC

Kenji wrote: post #2

This is slightly offtopic but I find the vulgar example passwords amusing. I used to use a lot of vulgar language in my code but when you have to commit it and other people (e.g. your supervisor) read it, you have to be more careful.

I find it especially amusing because "poop" and "butts" are my default "I need to enter some text here" strings.

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#6

Post by jkubicek » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 11:05 PM UTC

This was great. If there's ever a "Gentle Primer, pt. II" I'd love to see a walkthrough on replacing the existing hardcoded password with a different string.

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#7

Post by mwcampbell » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 11:28 PM UTC

Would have been a bit more realistic if the program had been stripped of symbols before disassembly. Still, the call to strcmp would be pretty obvious.

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#8

Post by i5rider » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 11:49 PM UTC

The title seems a bit misleading, e.g. one could reverse engineer source code into UML. Perhaps a more appropriate title would be: A Gentle Primer on Code disassembling.

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#9

Post by shanemhansen » Wed, Jan 28, 2015, 11:53 PM UTC

I used emacs hexl-mode and http://support.amd.com/TechDocs/24594.pdf to edit a je to a jne which caused the program to think I put in the correct password. That was fun.

Re: A Gentle Primer on Reverse Engineering

#10

Post by seanp2k2 » Thu, Jan 29, 2015, 12:06 AM UTC

jkubicek wrote: post #5

Kenji wrote: post #2

This is slightly offtopic but I find the vulgar example passwords amusing. I used to use a lot of vulgar language in my code but when you have to commit it and other people (e.g. your supervisor) read it, you have to be more careful.

I find it especially amusing because "poop" and "butts" are my default "I need to enter some text here" strings.

This is why we have [foo, bar, baz, quux] and example.com though: https://www.iana.org/domains/reserved