Analyzing Binaries

Reverse engineering is hypothesis testing against a program you cannot read. The cost of the job is dominated by how much code you look at, so the whole discipline is about narrowing: triage first, find the interesting few percent, then read that carefully.

When to Use

• Understanding what an unknown or undocumented executable does
• Recovering an algorithm, file format, or wire protocol from a binary
• Locating a vulnerability in a closed-source target
• Firmware analysis for embedded and IoT devices
• Reversing challenges in CTFs

When NOT to Use