Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

January 11, 2018

Introduction to reverse engineering and Assembly (Suicidal Bricking by Ubuntu Servers)

Filed under: Assembly,Cybersecurity,Reverse Engineering,Security — Patrick Durusau @ 4:05 pm

Introduction to reverse engineering and Assembly by Youness Alaoui.

From the post:

Recently, I’ve finished reverse engineering the Intel FSP-S “entry” code, that is from the entry point (FspSiliconInit) all the way to the end of the function and all the subfunctions that it calls. This is only some initial foray into reverse engineering the FSP as a whole, but reverse engineering is something that takes a lot of time and effort. Today’s blog post is here to illustrate that, and to lay the foundations for understanding what I’ve done with the FSP code (in a future blog post).

Over the years, many people asked me to teach them what I do, or to explain to them how to reverse engineer assembly code in general. Sometimes I hear the infamous “How hard can it be?” catchphrase. Last week someone I was discussing with thought that the assembly language is just like a regular programming language, but in binary form—it’s easy to make that mistake if you’ve never seen what assembly is or looks like. Historically, I’ve always said that reverse engineering and ASM is “too complicated to explain” or that “If you need help to get started, then you won’t be able to finish it on your own” and various other vague responses—I often wanted to explain to others why I said things like that but I never found a way to do it. You see, when something is complex, it’s easy to say that it’s complex, but it’s much harder to explain to people why it’s complex.

I was lucky to recently stumble onto a little function while reverse engineering the Intel FSP, a function that was both simple and complex, where figuring out what it does was an interesting challenge that I can easily walk you through. This function wasn’t a difficult thing to understand, and by far, it’s not one of the hard or complex things to reverse engineer, but this one is “small and complex enough” that it’s a perfect example to explain, without writing an entire book or getting into the more complex aspects of reverse engineering. So today’s post serves as a “primer” guide to reverse engineering for all of those interested in the subject. It is a required read in order to understand the next blog posts I would be writing about the Intel FSP. Ready? Strap on your geek helmet and let’s get started!
… (emphasis in original)

Intel? Intel? I heard something recently about Intel chips. You? 😉

No, this won’t help you specifically with Spectre and Meltdown, but it’s a step in the direction of building such skills.

The Project Zero team at Google did not begin life with the skills necessary to discover Spectre and Meltdown.

It took 20 years for those vulnerabilities to be discovered.

What vulnerabilities await discovery by you?

PS: Word on the street is that Ubuntu 16.04 servers are committing suicide rather than run more slowly with patches for Meltdown and Spectre. Meltdown and Spectre Patches Bricking Ubuntu 16.04 Computers. The attribution of intention to Ubuntu servers may be a bit overdone but the bricking part is true.

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