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Reverse Engineering: From newb to 0x001337AF

Back in September, FireEye began their third annual FLARE-ON reverse engineering challenge.  This is basically a reverse engineering themed CTF that lasted about six weeks.  This was my first time getting some hands on experience with Reverse Engineering so while I learned a lot, there is still much more to go.  Keeping in mind this is my first time really diving into reverse engineering, i’ll start off with what I knew at the start:

My dad:  “So is it kind of like taking a car apart down to its individual pieces”

Me:  “No, not kind of.  It is exactly like that!  That’s how people find out how malware works and how programs can break”

This  was an earlier conversation with my dad about RE and a summary of what I knew before deciding to take on this challenge.  In between work and everything else, I didn’t make it too far this time around only finishing the first challenge (with some help).  If nothing else I took away from this CTF, like many others learning the tools and which tools are the most effective is just as important as learning the craft.

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Art of Exploitation: A Hands-On Journey

From my experience, this book is not for the faint of heart and while it does teach a lot, it does not hold your hand.  I (so far) have noticed it spends a brief amount of time on stuff I understood, and immediately jumps into the “hard stuff”.

I would describe this book as a good separator for the people that say “I can kinda read code but not really understand code” to learning how code works and understanding things like buffer overflows or references to assembly in jokes. Yeah my friends are cool like that!

After finishing the first chapter a friend suggested creating an article thinking it would be useful and I was like, “yeah that’s a good idea, and for those that have already read it, it will be a good refresher.

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