4 ms·

How big is the legit usage demand for this? I imagine the vast majority of users are crackers.

by zerr 7y ago

jjoonathan 7y ago
I used it to "crack" the calibration menu of a 20 year old spectrum analyzer made by a defunct company, allowing me to resuscitate the instrument, saving myself about $2000 in equipment costs and a bunch of environmental waste. And then I did it a couple more times for other people. So evil. I should be ashamed of myself!
cjbprime 7y ago
Do you mean crackers as in people doing illegal things? Malware analysis and exploit development are two large professional subfields of infosec.
- zerr 7y ago
  Yeah, those who produce patchers (i.e. cracks) and keygens for proprietary software, which is quite a big scene.
roblabla 7y ago
I used Ghidra (an IDA competitor) to Reverse Engineer the Switch kernel in order to write homebrew. I also used it to reverse engineer the Steam Controller firmware as part of an ongoing work to better understand its proprietary protocol to write drivers for it, and maybe replace its firmware since it's now EOL'd. Crackers are using those tools for sure, but there are many legit use-cases, like security research and malware analysis. Heck, I also use IDA as a debugger for my own programs sometimes, as they tend to give a lot more information with very little configuration compared to GDB/LLDB.
nauful 7y ago
I've had to disassemble client applications several times to investigate issues with server compatibility when generic error codes and crashes don't give me any hints. Network debuggers don't help when the issue is caused by incorrect client processing and you only wrote the server. In all of those cases modifying the disassembled executables is not an option (both legal and must work with original installs), but was invaluable in creating workarounds on the server side. It would be simpler to submit patches to the original vendors but enterprise companies generally ignore them or put them on the back-burner for some unspecified future release.
userbinator 7y ago
The crackers will just crack the full version. When I was into that stuff many years ago, it was a bit of "rite of passage" to crack IDA yourself.

How big is the legit usage demand for this? I imagine the vast majority of users are crackers.

by zerr 7y ago

How big is the legit usage demand for this? I imagine the vast majority of users are crackers.

I used it to "crack" the calibration menu of a 20 year old spectrum analyzer made by a defunct company, allowing me to resuscitate the instrument, saving myself about $2000 in equipment costs and a bunch of environmental waste. And then I did it a couple more times for other people. So evil. I should be ashamed of myself!

cjbprime 7y ago

Do you mean crackers as in people doing illegal things? Malware analysis and exploit development are two large professional subfields of infosec.

zerr 7y ago
Yeah, those who produce patchers (i.e. cracks) and keygens for proprietary software, which is quite a big scene.

roblabla 7y ago

I used Ghidra (an IDA competitor) to Reverse Engineer the Switch kernel in order to write homebrew. I also used it to reverse engineer the Steam Controller firmware as part of an ongoing work to better understand its proprietary protocol to write drivers for it, and maybe replace its firmware since it's now EOL'd. Crackers are using those tools for sure, but there are many legit use-cases, like security research and malware analysis. Heck, I also use IDA as a debugger for my own programs sometimes, as they tend to give a lot more information with very little configuration compared to GDB/LLDB.

nauful 7y ago

I've had to disassemble client applications several times to investigate issues with server compatibility when generic error codes and crashes don't give me any hints. Network debuggers don't help when the issue is caused by incorrect client processing and you only wrote the server. In all of those cases modifying the disassembled executables is not an option (both legal and must work with original installs), but was invaluable in creating workarounds on the server side. It would be simpler to submit patches to the original vendors but enterprise companies generally ignore them or put them on the back-burner for some unspecified future release.

userbinator 7y ago

The crackers will just crack the full version. When I was into that stuff many years ago, it was a bit of "rite of passage" to crack IDA yourself.