Simple Reversing tutorial
First (Basic) Edition
-sarkar112

Cracking an application can be used to find vulnerabilities, or it can be used to get the full version of a program you want to register free. If you want to try to register the full version of a program, this tutorial is not for you, and you may not use it for illegal purposes. But, to become a good 'hacker', you must write exploits, and be good at programming, and you must be good at reversing, the better you are in the field of programming, and reversing, the better you are as a hacker. As a hacker you must find vulnerabilities, and write an exploit to manipulate the vulnerabilities to suit your needs. This tutorial will help you learn to reverse, and hopefully you shall learn about basic program structure, my next tutorial will teach you about the different types of vulnerabilities and how to exploit them in the C programming language. Many pages in this tutorial have large blank areas, that is because I have not spent much time writing it. This tutorial is aimed toward newer users, who have interest in application reversing.

Read the complete tutorial here

PS: If you do read it, and like/dislike it or would like to comment on it, please provide feedback.

very nice tutorial mate.

a basic overview is shown on how to reverse/crack/patch/unpack an application. I is very good as a fast guide for beguinners.
Hope on the second edition it goes deeper, as Sarkar112 promised

keep on the great work mate

i am looking forward to reading second edition

yeah dude its very nice, thanks thanks i enjoyed it!

It's great to know some people enjoyed it, but do you have any suggestions for the second version? It'll (hopefully) be released within a few months.

hmmmmmmmmm lemme see... a good ASM reference would be nice, for those who dont know ASM programming yet to understand those jumps and calls. this is very important for people to understand exactly what they will be doing to the application they wanna patch/unpack/reverse etc...

I'll be sure to include basic asm commands and what their purpose is as you read the second edition, I'll also add a page with a basic asm reference for beginners.

ah good to know that. and perhaps a deeper look into how to defeat anti-debugger protection for more sophisticated programs like Aspack, Asprotect, Anti-Crack Protect AKA AC-Protect, so that beguinners will have a clue on how they could defeat protections and understand some of the methods involved and search and perhaps 'develop' new ones

I don't want them to develop new one's I want them to licence all their programs on the GPL, but I will try to include a deeper understanding of packers and protecters, I'll also explain the use of the ollydbg 'Hide debugger' plugin, and how it defeats a few common antidebugging protections, I'll also explain the basic structure of the OllyDbg PDK (Plugin Development Kit), so readers can create very simple and basic ollydbg plug ins. Many of these tutorials can be found online, except they often involve 'cracking' a program illegally, and, I wanted to release a tutorial that can teach beginners how to 'crack' programs that were meant to be 'cracked' legally, and hopefully if they learn how to do that they will become better hacker's in the sense that the better you are at 'cracking' and programming, the better you are at hacking.

this will be very good

also a good disclaimer might be important so those kiddies wont come to blame you for anything if they do something illegal and get caught... remember everything we learn on security/hacking is for educational purposes only and on computers we have legal access to

Well, I need feedback and suggestions for the new edition, I've already had a few, but that's not much, I'll update my disclaimer for the new version, my intensions for this were just to write a legal tutorial on how to reverse applications, so beginners can learn how to find glitches, that they can exploit in applications, I never wanted someone who was going to read it for illegal reasons, and, as I said, the tutorial will not help you if you were going too, because it doesnt include 'cracking' applications not meant to be 'cracked'. If you intend to do anything illegal by reading it, please, don't read it at all, this is really for legal purposes only. People who write reversing tutorials with legal intensions and distribute them free, are like drops of rain in the desert.

I know that...u got me wrong...I told that in order to prevent headaches from idiot people that dont assume their faults/stupidity

I know what you had said, to add a disclaimer for people who do not take responsibility for their actions and will blame what they had done on me for distributing the tutorial, which had caused them to do something illegal. Anyways, before anyone says something about this being a security forum, I'd like to point out that this will help beginners advance in the field of IT/Security, because you need to learn reversing and programming in order to find vulnerabilities and write exploits.

true! plus if they wanna get really advanced they should learn at least the basics on multiple pop OS like Windows, Unix, Linux, BSD, Solaris.... this will help them out as well to get advanced in the security field, plus learning and understanding the attack mechanisms in order to create defense mechanisms against them.

Debugging isn't as easy under other operating systems, I'll try to teach them the basics for the win32 platform first, this'll help them have a better understanding of assembly and debugging, I might write a tutorial about debugging under linux in the future.

There are some good books over here which will learn you reversing tutorials like: Crackproof Your Software(No Starch-2002) and The secrets of reverse engineering (I don't know the publisher).

I like following site: hxxp://www.woodmann.com/krobar/

You can watch many number of tutorials.

Are they free? Because I searched on google for them and both of them turned up results from amazon, for a price.



Although it's legal, it seem's more closer to black hat, but it's still a good source for many good reversing tutorials. It's also older, it use's softice as a debugger, people often use ollydbg these days unless they're cracking something that requires a more powerful debugger. Most of the tutorials that try to help beginners use softice, and they're pretty old, there are only a few modern cracking tutorials for beginners. *Nothing illegal? Some of the tutorials on that site crack commercial programs, such as AutoFTP Pro 1.5b, so it is black hat.

that´s right and I am waiting for next version
hope it comes soon

Excellent tutorial, I am looking forward to the second edition.

Keep up the good work edu19!



If you want some Basic ASM tuts, PM me and I will give you a link to some posted on my forum.
But I don't think I am allowed to link to stuff on my forum (against GSO rules??)

Its on a case by case basis, since this is related go ahead

'keep up the good work' ...eh the tutorial writer was Sarkar112 not me hehe so I get no credits for the reversing tutorial...I wrote the registry one

about the ASM tutorials, post the links here mate, as Blake alredy allowed

It's not advertising, so it is allowed, so you should post the asm tutorials, I look forward to reading them in the future.