Creating IDA Structures

In the last chapter we saw how IDA’s array-aggregation capabilities allow disassembly listings to be simplified by collapsing long lists of data declarations into a single disassembly line. In the next few sections we take a look at IDA’s facilities for improving the readability of code that manipulates structures. Our goal is to move away from structure references such as [edx + 10h] and toward something more readable like [edx + ch8_struct.field5].

Whenever you discover that a program is manipulating a data structure, you need to decide whether you want to incorporate structure field names into your disassembly or whether you can make sense of all the numeric offsets sprinkled throughout the listing. In some cases, IDA ...

Get The IDA Pro Book, 2nd Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.