All great Ninjas start from humble beginnings. This course is intended for anyone just starting on their reverse engineering journey. It covers all of the basics required for more specialized applications of reversing like malware analysis, vulnerability research, and program analysis. From processors and assembly languages, to memory addressing and layout, to compilers and common language features, this class starts from ground zero and covers everything you need to go from Novice to Ninja.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with Python and C would be helpful, but not required. You must understand variables, if/while/for/etc logic, numbers in different bases, truth tables, and similar fundamental computing concepts.

Key Learning Objectives

• What a program is (really)
• How programs work / how computers run programs
• How programs store, manipulate, and interpret data
• The reversing process

Who Should Attend?

• Reverse Engineers
• Vulnerability Researchers
• Malware Analysts
• CTF Players
• Beginners
• Anyone looking to become a Binary Ninja

Course Agenda

• How to reverse engineer (reading source code)
• Advanced program theory
• How computers work / why we need those 1's and 0's (compiler theory)
• Basic processor features (registers, memory, instructions)
• Assembly* (see below)
• How to reverse engineer (reading assembly)
• Why reading assembly sucks
• Decompilation theory
• How to read Binary Ninja's ILs
• Simple crackmes
• Binary annotation / interaction
• Structuring data
• Finding data and references
• Binary patching / transforms / unpacking
• Dataflow analysis
• Source-to-sink analysis in Binary Ninja
• Using the debugger
• And more!

*This course will the following assembly concepts:

• Registers
• Opcodes and operands
• Operand order
• Specifics about the most common opcodes
• Delay Slots
• Branching/Flags
• Memory Addressing
• Stack/Heap
• etc

You'll learn the basic kicks and punches every Ninja should know about reading assembly (x86, x86-64, ARM, MIPS, etc), but also how to circumvent the need to do so as much as possible. Instead, this class aims to make you fluent in the high level abstractions provided by modern decompilers and analysis frameworks, their associated interactive features, and how to achieve an understanding of a program.

Hardware Requirements

A laptop that can run Binary Ninja (Ubuntu 20.04/22.04 x64; Windows 10/11 x64; MacOSX 11+ x64, MacOSX 12+ arm64).

(Optional) A VM to run binaries (most binaries are also provided for Linux, Mac, and Windows, though we often focus on just the Linux versions)

Included Course Materials

• A free non-commercial license of Binary Ninja including one year of updates (can convert to a license extension or used as a discount for a commercial upgrade upon request)
• Slides
• Example scripts and binaries
• Exercise templates
• Full answers and working solution scripts at the end of the class!