Chapter 1. Introduction to Disassembly

You may be wondering what to expect in a book dedicated to IDA Pro. While obviously IDA-centric, this book is not intended to come across as The IDA Pro User’s Manual. Instead, we intend to use IDA as the enabling tool for discussing reverse engineering techniques that you will find useful in analyzing a wide variety of software, ranging from vulnerable applications to malware. When appropriate, we will provide detailed steps to be followed in IDA for performing specific actions related to the task at hand. As a result we will take a rather roundabout walk through IDA’s capabilities, beginning with the basic tasks you will want to perform upon initial examination of a file and leading up to advanced uses and customization of IDA for more challenging reverse engineering problems. We make no attempt to cover all of IDA’s features. We do, however, cover the features that you will find most useful in meeting your reverse engineering challenges. This book will help make IDA the most potent weapon in your arsenal of tools.