Book Image

Mastering Reverse Engineering

By : Reginald Wong
Book Image

Mastering Reverse Engineering

By: Reginald Wong

Overview of this book

If you want to analyze software in order to exploit its weaknesses and strengthen its defenses, then you should explore reverse engineering. Reverse Engineering is a hackerfriendly tool used to expose security flaws and questionable privacy practices.In this book, you will learn how to analyse software even without having access to its source code or design documents. You will start off by learning the low-level language used to communicate with the computer and then move on to covering reverse engineering techniques. Next, you will explore analysis techniques using real-world tools such as IDA Pro and x86dbg. As you progress through the chapters, you will walk through use cases encountered in reverse engineering, such as encryption and compression, used to obfuscate code, and how to to identify and overcome anti-debugging and anti-analysis tricks. Lastly, you will learn how to analyse other types of files that contain code. By the end of this book, you will have the confidence to perform reverse engineering.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Assessment and static analysis


A file needs to undergo an initial assessment in order for us to determine what tools and analysis methods will be required. This process also helps us to create a strategy for analyzing the file. Doing such an assessment requires carrying out a light static analysis. Here are some ideas for assessment that may serve as our guide:

  • Where did it originate from:
    • One of the purposes of reverse engineering is to help network administrators prevent similar malware from infiltrating the network. Knowing where a file came from would be helpful in securing the channel used to transmit it. For example, if the file being analyzed was determined to have been an email attachment, network administrators should secure the email server.
  • Existing information:
    • Searching the internet for already existing information can be very helpful. There might be existing analyses that has been done on the file. We would be able to determine what behaviors to expect, which will help hasten...