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 12: Analyzing Processor Modules

In this chapter, we will address how to incorporate new processor modules in Ghidra. This is an advanced topic that involves learning the Specification Language for Encoding and Decoding for Ghidra (SLEIGH) so that we can specify the language, disassembling the code, performing function identification via prologue and epilogue byte pattern matching, stack frame creation, and function cross-references generation.

During this chapter, you will acquire extremely useful skills for breaking down advanced reverse engineering protections. You will do this by implementing a virtual machine so that the adversary (you) will have to apply reverse engineering to the virtual machine before reverse engineering the original binary. There are several examples of malware (such as ZeusVM, KINS, and so on) and powerful software protection that's mostly based on virtualization (such as VMProtect, Denuvo, and more).

SLEIGH and SLED

SLEIGH, the Ghidra...