Ghidra - Journey from Classified NSA Tool to Open Source
summary
Ghidra is an NSA-built, project-based SRE framework that combines disassembly, a decompiler, debugger workbench, and a file-system browser with project-based DB with undo/redo and multi-user version tracking. Development uses Java plugins, a Python/Java script manager, and a text grammar called SLAY processor definitions to add architectures; firm releases move from classified to unclassified in 2014 and to public open source in 2019 on GitHub. Community uptake shows impact: about 500,000+ downloads and dozens of pull requests and contributed processors.
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chapters (31)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:35Agenda
- 2:19jargon
- 4:04NSA Headquarters
- 5:25NSA Research
- 8:58Why is Ghidra in Research
- 9:58Software Reverse Engineering
- 11:59Software Growth
- 13:05Enter the Dragon
- 13:24Opening Reveal
- 13:35What is Ghidra
- 14:24Project Based
- 14:57Front End
- 18:42Other Features
- 20:08Code Base
- 20:43DB
- 21:13Model
- 22:14Program
- 22:39Plugins
- 24:06GUI Components
- 25:25Why Java
- 27:03Ghidra history
- 30:38Cybersecurity sharing
- 31:37Open Source Policy
- 35:27Upcoming features
- 36:38Android Dex support
- 37:47Bootloader binary
- 38:05Oak Data
- 39:37Public Impact
- 40:57Github
- 41:28Questions
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