Introduction To Reverse Engineering Software (OST)

Throughout the history of invention curious minds have sought to understand the inner workings of their gadgets. Whether investigating a broken watch, or improving an engine, these people have broken down their goods into their elemental parts to understand how they work. This is Reverse Engineering (RE), and it is done every day from recreating outdated and incompatible software, understanding malicious code, or exploiting weaknesses in software.

In this course we will explore what drives people to reverse engineer software and the methodology and tools used to do it.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

•Uses for RE

•The tricks and pitfalls of analyzing compiled code

•Identifying calling conventions

•How to navigate x86 assembly using IDA Pro

•Identifying Control Flows

•Identifying the Win32 API

•Using a debugger to aid RE

•Dynamic Analysis tools and techniques for RE

During the course students will complete many hands on exercises.

This class will serve as a prerequisite for a later class on malware analysis. Before taking this class you should take Introduction to Intel x86 or have equivalent knowledge.

Recommended Readings:
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