IDA pro disassembler and debugger

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Many of you might work for a company/university that has access to IDA pro or maybe you just downloaded their free version IDA homepage and need some help getting started.

Extra tools

First you should get all the tools you can get to make your life easier.

I would recommend the following tools

Essential

  • Plugins
    • PPCJT
    • SPU - To be able to disassemble SPU code
  • IDC scripts

All this can be found here:

Main branch http://git-hacks.com/ps3free/ps3ida http://git-hacks.com/~psicoleo/ps3free/psicoleos-ps3ida

  • PPCJT plugin v0.3:
    • - Fixed bug causing crash Ida Pro 6.1 ("oops! internal error 189")
    • - Fixed memory leak
    • + Added several new structures for constructing jump tables

Plugin tested on the eboot.bin file from the F.E.A.R.2: found and successfully created 137 jump tables.

Source code and precompiled plugins http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FC7Z0ZWE

Optional

Compiling the tools

Many of the tools are opensource, the idc script do not have to be compiled but the plugins must be.

To compile the latest plugins you will need Visual Studio and IDA sdk

The code itself should compile correctly, but there are many options that are specific for you PC ... In Visual Studio, you have to correctly set the paths to where you have the sdk installed and so on.

You will see there are options for 32/64 bits.. debug and release..

For that you can google, the instructions.. compile a "hello world" for ida, and then try to compile this.

If you want the latest version of the jump table plugin you can use this precompiled http://www.multiupload.com/07RP8RSDF3

Continuing your or someone else's work in another database

You might stump with someone's IDA database and you would like to continue his work. Or you found that there is a new great plugin/script that makes everything easier but you don´t want to loose your work.

Continuing graf_chokolo's work

I will take this as an example, the elf that runs in procs 6 (the one that has to do with QA flag, dongleaut, etc)

You might find some "coolstuff" but IDA doesnt find the xrefs and it is partially analyzed.

Isolate what you want to copy

1. Step identify what you want to extract from that database, in this case:

  • comments
  • function names

2. Produce File -> Database to idc

Assuming you produced a file named DATABASE.IDC

This file contains all what he has done to his database. We only want his function renames and comments so in linux we do 

grep "MakeComm" DATABASE.IDC

grep "MakeName" DATABASE.IDC

Copy this lines to another file. as an example COMMANDS.TXT

Create your own database

Extract the same elf from lv1.self (the elf we are using as an example is embedded in lv1 (look for matches and extrat that elf with a hex editor)

1. Load the elf you want (the one that runs in proces 6) // With the auto-analysis option disabled

I built a script that makes a good analyze of it and most of the embedded elfs.

analize_lv1_embedded_elf.idc

this script works only if you have an elf with all its segment properly named (like the ones embedded in lv1)

2. Run the script

3. Enable auto-analysis

Merge the databases

1. Paste the commands you copied in COMMANDS.TXT in the IDC window (or create an IDC script out of it)

2. ???????

3. Profit


Recommended IDA references

  • The IDA Pro Book - The Unofficial Guide to the World's Most Popular Disassembler - by Chris Eagle / August 2008, 640 pp. $59.95 / ISBN-10 1-59327-178-6 / ISBN-13 978-1-59327-178-7
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