Blue Fox

Part IArm Assembly Internals

If you've just picked up this book from the shelf, you're probably interested in learning how to reverse engineer compiled Arm binaries because major tech vendors are now embracing the Arm architecture. Perhaps you're a seasoned veteran of x86‐64 reverse engineering but want to stay ahead of the curve and learn more about the architecture that is starting to take over the processor market. Perhaps you're looking to get started on security analysis to find vulnerabilities in Arm‐based software or analyze Arm‐based malware. Or perhaps you're just getting started in reverse engineering and have hit a point where a deeper level of detail is required to achieve your goal.

Wherever you are on your journey into the Arm‐based universe of reverse engineering, this book is about preparing you, the reader, to understand the language of Arm binaries, showing you how to analyze them, and, more importantly, preparing you for the future of Arm devices.

Learning assembly language and how to analyze compiled software is useful in a wide variety of applications. As with every skill, learning the syntax can seem difficult and complicated at first, but it eventually becomes easier with practice.

In the first part of this book, we'll look at the fundamentals of Arm's main Cortex‐A architecture, specifically the Armv8‐A, and the main instructions you'll encounter when reverse engineering software compiled for this platform. In the second part of the book, we'll look ...