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

Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to use scripting to be more efficient when analyzing malware using Ghidra. We have used scripting to go beyond the limitations of static analysis and resolve some API function hashes that are calculated at runtime.

You also learned the advantages and disadvantages of using Python or Java when developing a script.

You learned how to translate assembly language algorithms into Java and Python, and also learned skills in scripting while developing your first extremely useful script. By using the provided Ghidra Flat API function classification, you are now able to quickly identify Ghidra API functions required by your own scripts without needing to remember or waste time looking for a function in the documentation.

In the next chapter of this book, we will cover Ghidra headless mode, which can be very useful in some situations, such as performing analysis of a huge amount of binaries or using Ghidra alone to integrate it with other tools...