Getting Started with Ghidra

Preface

There is a growing need for people who are skilled at reverse engineering software. The primary reason for this is to better understand how malware works in order to identify its existence on systems. This identification can be used to isolate the malware and keep it from spreading. The problem with malware, though, is that it is constantly changing. We find a way to identify a new piece of malware and the malware developers change how they do things. And so the cycle continues.

Ghidra is a tool that can help with the process of reverse engineering. It has been made available for free and is about as powerful a reverse engineering tool as you will find for free. Certainly a single tool. This is why you should take a look at Ghidra.

Presumably, if you are reading this, you have some interest in reverse engineering or at least some curiosity about the tool. You may not be exclusively interested in being a reverse engineer. That’s not the only purpose for using Ghidra. You may simply be a programmer who wants another tool to look at how your code is being handled by a compiler. You may be someone who develops real-time programs where performance is essential. You can use Ghidra to get a better look at your compiled program, regardless of the processor architecture and language you are using. Let’s take a look at it more closely.