Chapter 1. Overview of Ghidra
Ghidra (pronounced GEE-druh with a hard g) is a reverse engineering framework, developed by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). It is one of many tools that have been released as open source by the NSA in recent years. In this section, we are going to go over where this tool comes from, as well as the ways it can be useful for you. This includes some use cases to talk about some of the reasons for using Ghidra, though these are not considered to be comprehensive. You may find as you are reading that you have other tasks you would like to set Ghidra to.
Note
If you’re interested in perusing the complete list of all the open source projects at the NSA, you can go to https://code.nsa.gov.
In a way, Ghidra is a unique tool. You don’t see a lot of reverse engineering frameworks around, though there are a lot of other tools reverse engineers use. Certainly there are a lot of frameworks that are available for security testing—most specifically penetration testing. Normally, if you wanted to reverse engineer software, you would use a disassembler like IDA Pro, OllyDbg, or the Immunity Debugger. Ghidra provides the same functionality you would expect to see in a more traditional debugger like those mentioned above. It also provides some additional features, including the ability to extend what you get, which is what makes it a framework rather than just a debugger.
Quick Features Overview
Certainly, Ghidra will do the disassembly that any other ...
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