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

Using and adapting existing scripts

Ghidra scripts allow you to automate RE tasks when analyzing binaries. Let's cover an overview of how to use scripts from CodeBrowser in a hello world program. Our starting point here is a hello world program loaded into Ghidra's CodeBrowser, as explained in the Overview of Ghidra's features section of Chapter 1, Getting Started with Ghidra.

As mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, Ghidra includes a true script arsenal. To access it, go to Window and then Script Manager. Alternatively, click the button highlighted in the following screenshot:

Figure 2.1 – The run script button highlighted in the quick access bar

As you can see on the left in the folder browser, all these scripts are categorized by folder, showing the scripts each one contains when selected:

Figure 2.2 – Script Manager

In the preceding screenshot, when clicking on the checklist icon located...