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How I Compile Reverse Engineering Exercises For Maximum Learning And Minimum Noise

- July 16, 2020

Imagine if your first reverse engineering exercise was to reconstruct an encrypted IAT – if you don’t fully know what that means, that’s the point: beginner reverse engineering exercises should be clear (and fun)! Anything that can throw off the analysis of a reverse engineer, such as optimized inlined functions, shouldn’t be in beginner exercises. Secondly, I would like my exercises to run on as students' computers as possible. These are the goals I strive for when creating CyberQueens exercises, and here is how I configure my compiler to meet those goals. Ensuring A Clear And Concise Executable is Compiled To prevent the compiler from adding any unintended opcodes or logic, which could confuse aspiring reverse engineers, set all of the following build properties: To disable uninitialized memory checks (and other debugging) checks from being automatically compiled into the code , set the compilation target to Release. This can be done from VS’s main page, as seen in Fi

Windows Source Code Leaks & A Story Of Lost Source Code

- June 02, 2020

Disclaimer: The information presented in this blog post is for educational purposes only. When researching or just tinkering with Windows and Microsoft executables, having the source code is a great advantage. This short article is a collection of links to Windows and Microsoft code. Leaked Windows Source Code Links to leaked Windows source files: Windows NT4 https://github.com/ZoloZiak/WinNT4 Windows 2000 https://github.com/pustladi/Windows-2000 Windows Research Kit https://github.com/Zer0Mem0ry/ntoskrnl Links aggregated from BlueHatIL talk “Fuzzing on the windshield” Official Microsoft Published Source Code Microsoft has recently become significantly more Open Source oriented, and has even started actively developing Open Source projects and publishing some of its own code. Links to published Microsoft code: Microsoft .NET source https://referencesource.microsoft.com/ Microsoft’s Github https://github.com/Microsoft Other Resources Other resources to help you

Guy's 30 Reverse Engineering Tips & Tricks

- May 01, 2020

Good morning lovely people! During April I challenged myself to tweet 1 reverse engineering tip every day. For your viewing pleasure, here I aggregated all 30 tips. Be sure to follow me @whtaguy for my latest tweets and more reverse engineering extravaganza. Leave a comment on this post or tag me on Twitter - I reply pretty quickly :) If the tweets aren't displayed properly (for example if there are no pictures), temporarily turn off tracker protection, which blocks loading the required resources from twitter Tips & Tricks Tip 1 *Reverse Engineering Tip 1/30* long branch-less functions w/many xors & rols are usually hash functions. IDA view of MD5 func: #BinReversingTips pic.twitter.com/cLSGfxNupK — Guy🏂 (@whtaguy) April 1, 2020 Tip 2 -Reversing Tip 2/30- Building on the last tip, after finding a hash function, google its constant to identify the exact hash algorithm. #BinReversingTips pic.twitter.com/MJJIBY9pde — Guy🏂 (@whtaguy) Apri

Calling Arbitrary Functions In EXEs: Performing Calls to EXE Functions Like DLL Exports

- April 11, 2020

Motivation When reversing or fuzzing an executable, being able to run an arbitrary function with controlled data is extremely helpful. Through iteratively playing with the function's parameters and examining the output, we can better understand the function's logic. Background A dll (Dynamic Linked Library) with our target function would allow us to conveniently review and test the function as we wish. The only problem is that usually the function we want to examine resides in an exe, not a dll. Converting¹ an exe to a dll is a solvable challenge. After all, both an exe and a dll share the same PE (Portable Executable) file format . So let's explore, how can we convert¹ an exe to a dll? Spoiler: there are a few more steps than just changing the extension 😉 ¹ "convert to DLL" = fundamentally behave like a DLL. I'll use this exe created from the following code and target the decode_string function for demonstration purposes throughout this post.

Zero Day Discovery and Infosec Success Celebrations

- March 27, 2020

With the world in quarantine and isolation because of COVID-19, I decided to publish a blog post reminding us of more cheerful times. Take yourself back to the last time you spent weeks hammering away at a seemingly impossible challenge, and quickly fast-forward to when you finished that problem. Do you remember your intense excitement and satisfaction? How did you celebrate your success? I asked security researchers how they celebrate finding 0days, APTs in the wild, new malware, and other big successes. Here are the results. Thomas Roth @StackSmashing Founder of leveldown , co-founder of keylabsio "I once had a celebratory cake for an 0day" "otherwise I tend to [celebrate] with a nice beer in the evening :)" Thomas's celebratory 0day cake Ashley Shen @ashley_shen_920 Security Engineer at Google Threat Analysis Group "I usually celebrate with picking a restaurant from my do-eat list and have a good meal with friends :)"

Integer Overflow Reference: Min & Max Values

- January 28, 2020

A reference for when working with integers, and looking for integer overflows and underflows. When an integer type, such as an int or unsigned short , overflows (the variable is given a value greater than the maximum value it can hold), the integer "wraps around" and becomes the minimum value the type can store. Similarly, when an integer type underflows (the variable is given a value smaller than the maximum value it can hold), the integer "wraps around" and becomes the maximum value the type can store. Use the chart below to find the minimum and maximum values each type can hold. Size Chart Type Size In Bytes Minimum Value Maximum Value char 1 byte -128 +127 unsigned char 1 byte 0 +255 short 2 bytes -32,768 +32,767 unsigned short 2 bytes 0 +65,535 int 4 bytes -2,147,483,648 +2,147,483,647 long 4 bytes -2,147,483,648 +2,147,483,647 unsigned int 4 bytes 0 +4,294,967,295 unsigned long 4 bytes 0 +4,