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

Running non-GUI scripts in a project

As mentioned before, you can use Ghidra headless mode to run scripts before and after the analysis of a file (pre-scripts and post-scripts, respectively).

As you know, non-GUI scripts run without human interaction, so it is recommended to write a headless script extending from the HeadlessScript class that, at the same time, extends from the already-known GhidraScript class.

But extending from HeadlessScript is not a must. You can write a headed script extending from the GhidraScript class directly and it will also work when running in headless mode, but if some GUI-specific method is called, then ImproperUseException will be thrown.

A similar thing happens in reverse. When a script extending from HeadlessScript is running on Ghidra headed mode, if a HeadlessScript-only method is called, an exception will also be thrown.

Let's adapt an existing Ghidra script currently extending from GhidraScript in order to extend from HeadlessScript...