Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering

by Eldad Eilam

Book Overview

Beginning with a basic primer on reverse engineering-including computer internals, operating systems, and assembly language-and then discussing the various
applications of reverse engineering, this book provides readers with practical, in-depth techniques for software reverse engineering. The book is broken into two parts, the first deals with security-related reverse engineering and the second explores the more practical aspects of reverse engineering...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0764574817
• ISBN13: 9780764574818
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Wiley
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 2.09 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 7.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Pure perfection.

I am sorry for having written this review so late. This book is a true gem; a must-have for any serious software engineer. Understanding how software works under the hood is key to writing code properly -- and this book provides an insight on that topic in an absolutely BRILLIANT MANNER. Having a fair bit of reverse engineering experience myself, I have found this book to be extremely concise and detaild -- and I have learned a fair bit of new material while reading it. There is no dull moment in this book. The author (who is clearly a gifted writer) explains reverse-engineering-related topics in a fascinating and unique manner, and, within this work, he actually cements the way in which reverse engineering should always be taught. Written by a true master, the book is very pedagogic; every chapter is accompanied by detailed examples -- which make the discussed topics crystal-clear. I would have given this book more than five stars, had I been able to -- and I can recommend it to every software deveopler without a trace of hesitation; actually, it is now that I have bought an additional copy as a gift to a friend. Rest assured that this book will be a crucial part in your collection of tech books, just like it is in mine. To sum it all up (and as it becomes clear from the above written): I think that this book is a magnificent work of art (no less), and I would even dare to say that I enjoyed it more than any tech book I ever owned. With all the aforementioned complements and my vain attempts to describe the magnificence of this work, words still can't fully do justice to this book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

A good read

This book takes a tutorialistic approach to reverse engineering. It assumes you have a working knowledge of assembly language and C/C++. The author briefly introduces you to some of the programming languages in use, Windows Internals, gives an overview of some of the tools available, and then proceeds to walk you through some example reverse-engineering. The author spent alot of time covering Windows internals. The overview of Assembly language could have been a little more thorough before going into reverse-engineering, instead most of the appendix is devoted to this. More time introducing the debugging tools and the use of it's features instead of the brief overview would have been helpful too. Despite these shortcomings the book is very educational. If you are not up to speed on C/C++ and assembly would recommend reading Assembly Language Step-by-step: Programming with DOS and Linux (with CD-ROM) and The C Programming Language (2nd Edition) before reading this book.

A great tutorial for reverse engineering

The authour walked you through the techniques which can be used in reverse/anti-reverse software. Most of them can be applied and used when you do your own code reverse. The book also teaches you how to protect your own application from reversing. This book isn't just a theoritcal or academic book. You can learn the practical skills from it.

Excellent Resource

This book is a very good introduction and instructional manual on a subject that is both relevant and shadowy. Uttering the phrase, "reverse engineering", these days conjures up visions of crackers and other criminals breaking into websites and stealing private information. But for anyone serious about improving their programming skills, "Reversing - Secrets of Reverse Engineering" is a must read. For example, debugging and reversing activities are very close kin; you will improve your skill in tracking down and understanding bugs in your code by learning some of the techniques presented in this book. The highlight of the book (for me) was Chapter 11 where the author presents step-by-step sessions in reversing progressively more difficult protection schemes. If you feel uncomfortable with this activity, rest assured that the author has neatly sidestepped some murky legal issues by using Internet examples created for this purpose and his own program, designed to illustrate some of the protection techniques presented in other chapters of his book. Another chapter, "Deciphering File Formats", uses this same trick by reversing an encryption program Mr. Eilam wrote for this purpose. The appendices are another valuable contribution where the discussion turns to common code patterns produced by most compilers and how to interpret and extract the last bit of information from them. Minor nits - I wish the assembly listings were broken up to better highlight points made by the author in his discussions. It became very tedious to match addresses mentioned in his discourse with those in the listings and reduced the overall effectiveness of the material. Also, I was not able to find in the book what seemed to be bibliographical references to other works that were cited in discussions on decompilation and other topics. But putting these small criticisms aside I highly recommend this book and wish something as comprehensive as this had been available years ago.

Extremely didactic and well written, but . . .

This is an extraordinarily didactic book. If you want jump inside this field ("secure code"), then take the book by the hand and go ahead. Well written and very pedagogic, the book is useful even for experts. The only limitation (clearly stated in the back cover) is the full orientation toward the Microsoft's .NET platform (and of course the Windows/Intel realm). Some chapters should be more deeply analyzed and the chapter 8 (Reversing Malware) is somewhat naive. Even so, overall . . . 5 stars. If you are in "secure code", this book is a MUST. p.s. As an added value the book is so self-contained (no external sources needed) and so complete, that can be used as a quick but sufficient introduction to computer system architectures. To know more about the book try the "Search Inside" feature in this same page.