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 3: Ghidra Debug Mode

In this chapter, we will introduce Ghidra debug mode. By using the Eclipse IDE, you will be able to develop and debug, in a professional way, any feature of Ghidra, including plugins, which were covered in the previous chapter.

We choose to use the Eclipse IDE (https://ghidra-sre.org/InstallationGuide.html) because it is the only one officially supported by Ghidra. It is technically possible to use other ones, but they are not officially supported. There is a severe security issue in the Ghidra debug mode functionality that affects Ghidra 9.0, so please use any later version of the program to deploy your development environment. The current safe and stable version at the time of writing this book is 9.1.2.

Finally, you will learn how to exploit the remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

  • Setting up the Ghidra development environment
  • Debugging the Ghidra code and...