Book Image

Ghidra Software Reverse Engineering for Beginners

By : A. P. David
Book Image

Ghidra Software Reverse Engineering for Beginners

By: A. P. David

Overview of this book

Ghidra, an open source software reverse engineering (SRE) framework created by the NSA research directorate, enables users to analyze compiled code on any platform, whether Linux, Windows, or macOS. This book is a starting point for developers interested in leveraging Ghidra to create patches and extend tool capabilities to meet their cybersecurity needs. You'll begin by installing Ghidra and exploring its features, and gradually learn how to automate reverse engineering tasks using Ghidra plug-ins. You’ll then see how to set up an environment to perform malware analysis using Ghidra and how to use it in the headless mode. As you progress, you’ll use Ghidra scripting to automate the task of identifying vulnerabilities in executable binaries. The book also covers advanced topics such as developing Ghidra plug-ins, developing your own GUI, incorporating new process architectures if needed, and contributing to the Ghidra project. By the end of this Ghidra book, you’ll have developed the skills you need to harness the power of Ghidra for analyzing and avoiding potential vulnerabilities in code and networks.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Ghidra
6
Section 2: Reverse Engineering
12
Section 3: Extending Ghidra

Chapter 11: Incorporating New Binary Formats

In this chapter, we will discuss how to incorporate new binary formats into Ghidra, enabling you to analyze exoteric binaries – for instance, ROMs of video games (a copy of the data from the cartridge or any other read-only memory). Throughout this chapter, you will learn how to develop Ghidra loader extensions, which were previously introduced in the Loaders subsection of the The Ghidra extension module skeleton section in Chapter 4, Using Ghidra Extensions.

We will start by looking at what a binary file is. We will explore the differences between raw binary files and formatted binary files and how Ghidra can deal with them. Next, we will perform some experiments with Ghidra to understand how binaries are loaded from a user perspective. Finally, we will analyze the loader for old-style DOS executable binaries from a Ghidra developer perspective. The loader under analysis is responsible for enabling Ghidra to load MS-DOS executable...