Cybercriminals are always ready to bring your reputation down by injecting various menacing malicious softwares. But what techniques the attackers used to create that malware and how one can mitigate them is what you can learn through the reverse engineering process. A brief definition of reverse engineering, followed by its benefits, process, and tools, is discussed below.
What is Reverse Engineering?
Reverse engineering is a method of decompiling any software or hardware in order to extract information or knowledge about its design, formation, and behaviour. This technique can be applied to various domains such as software, hardware, mechanical and electrical systems. Moreover, for software, reverse engineering is performed by examining the code of a program to understand its logic, algorithms, and functionality. Thus, it’s a long process that deals with learning the complexity of any product and finding out if there is any scope for improvement. However, in the context of cybersecurity, reverse engineering is performing back engineering to know about any malware, its components and its functionality.
Benefits of Reverse Engineering in Cyber Security
Reverse engineering is extremely important in cyber security to know about the inner working of any malware, other vulnerabilities, and potential security flaws. This knowledge helps security professionals to remove malware from any system or device.
A few benefits are listed below :
Malware Analysis :
Reverse engineering is crucial for understanding and analysing malware. Security researchers dismantle malicious software to determine its functionality, the techniques it applies to exploit vulnerabilities, and its potential impact. It helps analysts develop effective countermeasures and, moreover, understand the intentions and capabilities of threat actors.
Vulnerability Discovery :
Reverse engineering helps identify vulnerabilities in software or systems. By analysing the source code of applications, security experts can uncover programming errors, design flaws, or improper implementation of security mechanisms. This information enables developers to enhance the overall security posture of the system.
Protocol Analysis :
Back engineering is again used to understand and analyse closed protocols. By examining network traffic, deconstructing communication patterns, and analysing protocol implementations, it helps to identify misconfigurations. This analysis aids in securing communication channels while ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of data transferred over these protocols.
Firmware Analysis :
Another use is to analyse firmware in embedded systems, such as routers, IoT devices, or industrial control systems. By reverse engineering firmware, many vulnerabilities can be found that can help reduce security breaches.
Steps Involved in Reverse Engineering
- The first step includes downloading any sample malware to carry out its functionality test.
- Secondly, using a decompiler, experts analyse the whole code of that downloaded malware to understand its working and how threatening it is.
- Thirdly, a sandbox environment, where the malware can’t affect the computer, is created.
- The fourth step is to run the malware and check its behaviour.
- Lastly, a report is created on the overall information gathered, and solutions are implemented to prevent security risks.
Top Reverse Engineering Tools for Cyber Experts
Apktool
This third-party tool is extremely beneficial in the reverse engineering process that holds the ability to decode resources into almost original form. The resources also include .arsc, 9.png, and XMLs. One can debug smali code in various small steps. It also facilitates working with an app due to the project-like file structure & automation for certain repetitive operations such as building apk etc.
diStorm3
Penetration testers use his lightweight tool to disassemble the instructions into 16, 32, and 64-bit modes. It is the fastest disassembling library with the potential to decompile the source code cleanly, easily readable, and portable. Its sole dependency on the C library makes it useful in embedded and kernel modules.
OllyDbg
With a user-friendly interface, OllyDbg tool is useful when there is no availability of the source code. It then focuses on the binary code analysis and helps recognising the procedures, switches, API calls, strings, tables. Furthermore, it is also helpful in locating routines from the object files and libraries.
It is important to know that the latest version of this tool can’t decompile binaries for 64-bit processors.
The above-mentioned tools are the most common tools in the market, with a good user interface, and are easy to use.
Thus, Reverse Engineering could really help businesses to know about how sophisticated the attackers are and how threatening is the malware injected by them. The whole process of Back Engineering requires time, but once you are able to gain knowledge about the malicious software, it is worth it. Secninjaz also offers and has already offered Reverse Engineering services to businesses struggling with cyber risks.
