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

Understanding the existing Ghidra processor modules

In this section, we will provide an overview of Ghidra's processor modules from a user perspective. Ghidra provides support for a lot of processor architectures. You can find a list of supported architectures by listing the directories included in the Ghidra/Processors/ directory of both the Ghidra distribution and Ghidra's GitHub repository (https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra/tree/master/Ghidra/Processors), as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 12.1 – Listing Ghidra's processor modules (partial list)

At the time of writing this book, Ghidra supports the following list of processors:6502, 68000, 6805, 8048, 8051, 8085, AARCH64, ARM, Atmel, CP1600, CR16, DATA, Dalvik, HCS08, HCS12, JVM, M8C, MCS96, MIPS, PA-RISC, PIC, PowerPC, RISCV, Sparc, SuperH, SuperH4, TI_MSP430, Toy, V850, Z80, tricore, and x86.If we compare this list with IDA Professional Edition processor...