Software is invading our lives at every level. Since those programs are incredibly hard to verify and since complete source code audit and rebuilds aren’t always practical or possble, tools such as IDA provide a convenient way to check if a program really does what it claims to do, contains no harmful vulnerabilities and leaks no sensitive information. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) validationĪ lot of software are developed outside the country where they are used.The Wisconsin Safety Analyzer, for instance, is a very interesting project investigating software vulnerability where IDA Pro plays an important role. If they aren’t fixed they could be exploited by third-parties with dishonest or criminal intentions. IDA Pro is the ideal tool to investigate such vulnerabilities. The topic of vulnerability disclosure remains quite controversial but software is, as a matter of fact, unfortunately often vulnerable to outside attacks.

IDA Pro is used daily by anti-virus, malware and spyware analysts to investigate new virus samplesthreats and to provide timely solutions. IDA Pro has become such a standard in the field of malware analysis that information about new viruses is often exchanged under the form of “IDA Databases”. Given the speed and the complexity of today’s hostile code, a powerful analysis solution is required. It consists of a very powerful macro-like language that can be used to automate simple to medium complexity tasks. IDA Pro is a complete integrated development environment.

A built-in programming language and an open plugin architecture pushes interactivity even further. IDA always allows the human analyst to override its decisions or to provide hints. A disassembler is a piece of software used to translate machine code into a human readable format called assembly language.Ī debugger is a computer program that assists in the detecttion and correction of errors in other computer programs.

Ida hexrays