Getting to know IDA Pro

With the tools that we have covered thus far, you must have a good idea of the workflow toolchain required for a static analysis. Let us now introduce ourselves to IDA Pro (The Interactive Disassembler) from Hex-Rays. The IDA Pro Book by Chris Eagle is a solid reference and guide book towards building mastery in IDA Pro and reverse engineering in general. Since there would not be too much use of regurgitating all of the IDA Pro-specific material and given the space constraints, we will go over the often-used features in IDA Pro and build familiarity with this tool.

Upon opening a binary executable in IDA Pro (drag and drop in the Open menu), the Load a new file modal dialog pops up:

The binary format is parsed and identified ...

Get Windows Malware Analysis Essentials 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.