Ghidra 101: Binary Patching

In this blog series, I will be putting the spotlight on useful Ghidra features you may have missed. Each post will look at a different feature and show how it helps you save time and be more effective in your reverse engineering workflows. Ghidra is an incredibly powerful tool, but much of this power comes from knowing how to use it effectively.

There are several circumstances where it can be helpful to make a modification to code or data within a compiled program. Sometimes, it is necessary to fix a vulnerability or compatibility issue without functional source code or compilers. This can happen when source code gets lost, systems go out of support, or software firms go out of business. In case you should find yourself in this situation, keep calm and read on to learn how to do this within Ghidra. 

Until recently, Ghidra was rather limited in this capability. This changed with the summer 2021 release of Ghidra 10.0 which introduced the ability to export programs with proper executable formats for Windows (PE) and Linux (ELF). Ghidra versions before 10 or for executable formats besides PE and ELF require using a raw import and raw export and is generally far less robust. In this post, I will review a Windows x86 executable, but the general strategy is applicable more broadly with some nuances for specific platforms and architectures.

https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-data-protection/ghidra-101-binary-patching/

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