HOW TO PERFORM A PROFESSIONAL REVERSE ENGINEERING? EXPLOITING SOFTWARE 10/2012

THE TOOLS
How to Analyze Applications With Olly Debugger?
By Jaromir Horejsi

When you write your own programs and you would like to change or modify some of their functions, you simply open the source code you have, make desired changes, recompile and your work is done. However, you don’t need to have source code to modify function of a program – using specialized tools, you can understand a lot from program binary file, you can add your new functions and features and you can also modify and alter its behavior. Process of analyzing computer program’s structure, functions and operations without having a source code available is called reverse engineering.

How to Disassemble and Debug Executable Programs on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X?
By Jacek Adam Piasecki

The Interactive Disassembler Professional (IDA Pro) is an extremely powerful disassembler distributed by Hex-Rays. Although IDA Pro is not the only disassembler, it is the disassembler of choice for many malware analysts, reverse engineers, and vulnerability analysts.

How to use Socat and Wireshark for Practical SSL Protocol Reverse Engineering?
By Shane R. Spencer

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Man-In-the-Middle (MITM) proxies have two very specific purposes. The first is to allow a client with one set of keys to communicate with a service that has a different set of keys without either side knowing about it. This is typically seen as a MITM attack but can be used for productive ends as well. The second is to view the unencrypted data for security, educational, an reverse engineering purposes. For instance, a system administrator could set up a proxy to allow SSL clients that don’t support more modern SSL methods or even SSL at all to get access to services securely. Typically, this involves having the proxy set up behind your firewall so that unencrypted content stays within the confines of your local area.

REACHING THE CODE
How to Defeat Code Obfuscation While Reverse Engineering?
By Adam Kujawa

Have you ever decompiled malware or another application and found nothing but a small amount of code and lots of junk? Have you ever been reading decompiled code only to watch it jump into a section that does not exist? If you have been in either of these situations, chances are you were dealing with obfuscated code or a packed binary. Not all is lost however, as getting around these methods of code protection is not impossible. However, all obfuscated code must be de-obfuscated before it can run. Keeping this in mind, it is possible to decrypt, de-obfuscate and unpack every line of code in every kind of program, the trick is simply knowing how.

How to Identify and Bypass Anti-reversing Techniques?
By Eoin Ward

Learn the anti-reversing techniques used by malware authors to thwart the detection and analysis of their precious malware. Find out about the premier shareware debugging tool Ollydbg and how it can help you bypass these anti-reversing techniques.This article aims to look at anti-reversing techniques used in the wild. These are tricks used by malware authors to stop or impede reverse engineers from analysing there files.

REVERSE IT YOURSELF
How to Reverse Engineer?
By Lorenzo Xie

If you are a programmer, software developer, or just tech savvy, then you should have heard about reverse engineering and know both its good and evil side. Just in case, here is a brief introduction for those who don’t know what it is. In this article, we are going to talk about RCE, also known as reverse code engineering. Reverse code engineering is the process where the code and function of a program is modified, or may you prefer: reengineered without the original source code. For example, if a software programmer has created a program with a bug, does not release a fix, then an experienced end user can reverse engineer the application and fix the bug for everyone using the program. Sounds helpful doesn’t it?

How to Reverse the Code?
By Raheel Ahmad

Although revealing the secret is always an appealing topic for any audience, Reverse Engineering is a critical skill for programmers. Very few information security professionals, incident response analysts and vulnerability researchers have the ability to reverse binaries efficiently. You will undoubtedly be at the top of your professional field (Infosec Institute).
It is like finding a needle in a dark night. Not everyone can be good at decompiling or reversing the code. I can show a roadmap to successfully reverse the code with tools but reverse engineering requires more skills and techniques.

HAKIN9 EXTRA
JScrambler – Protect Your Code (Review)
By Raheel Ahmad

“Modern websites, which use Web 2.0 and AJAX, often generate HTML and JavaScript code on the fly. This means that standard static code analysers cannot fully scan the source code and locate client-side JavaScript issues, since the source code itself does not yet include the entire HTML and JavaScript code. We used a sample group of 675 websites, including all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies, plus 175 handpicked websites including IT security companies, web application security companies, social networking sites and other popular websites.”