Nixyri/ghidra
1
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra.git synced 2024-11-22 04:05:39 +00:00
Code Issues Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Updated 9.2 WhatsNew

Browse Source
This commit is contained in:
emteere 2020-11-09 22:27:43 -05:00
parent a3f599694e
commit 282a030325
1 changed files with 82 additions and 51 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

133
Ghidra/Configurations/Public_Release/src/global/docs/WhatsNew.html
View File

@ -53,30 +53,36 @@
contributions. Thanks to all those who have contributed their time, thoughts, and code. The Ghidra user community
thanks you too!</P>
<P>NOTE: The Ghidra 9.0 server is compatible with Ghidra 9.x clients, however starting with 9.1 the server
<P>NOTE: Ghidra Server: The Ghidra 9.0 server is compatible with Ghidra 9.x clients, however starting with 9.1 the server
requires clients to use a TLS secure connection for the initial RMI registry port access.
If the Ghidra multi-user server is upgraded to 9.2, then all clients must
upgrade to 9.2. A 9.x Ghidra client will fall back to a non-TLS connection when accessing the RMI Registry on
a 9.0 server. Note that all other server interaction including authentication were and continue to be
performed over a secure TLS connection.</P>
<P>Minor Note: If a processors instruction implementation has changed significantly, any generated .fidb files using that
<P>Minor Note: FIDB Files: If a processors instruction implementation has changed significantly, any generated .fidb files using that
processor definition may need to be regenerated.
Changes that could require regeneration include, change in instruction size, number of operands, the nature of
the operands, changes in register decoding for an operand. The x86-64bit has had such changes, for example there were
changes to the decoded register for many instructions with prefix byte overrides. All the provided .fidb files have
been regenerated, and new ones for VS 2017/2019 have been added.</P>
<P>Minor Note: Ghidra-compiled .sla files are not always backwards compatible due to changes in the underlying .sla
<P>Minor Note: SLA Files: Ghidra-compiled .sla files are not always backwards compatible due to changes in the underlying .sla
specification. In the pre-built ghidra, all .sla files are re-built from scratch. However if you have local processor modules,
or are building ghidra from scratch, you may need to do a clean build. Any processor modules with changes are normally recompiled
at Ghidra startup so this situation is rare.</P>
<P>Minor Note: AARCH64 Long: The size of a <b>long</b> on the AARCH64 has been changed from 4-bytes to 8-bytes in the data organization within the
compiler specification. This change could have ramifications in existing AARCH64 programs using a <b>long</b> within data structures or
custom storage of function parameters (dynamic storage should not be an issue). An included script <i><b>FixupCompositeDataTypesScript</b></i>
can be run on programs, only with <i>exclusive checkout</i> in Multi-User, where the datatype sizes for <b>long</b> has changed. This general script can be used
whenever a program's base datatypes have changed in the compiler specification, which should be rare occurence.</P>
<H2>Open Source Based Graphing</H2>
<P>Ghidra has been integrated with an open source graph visualization package, called JUNGGRAPHT, to display interactive
block graphs, call graphs, AST control flow graphs, as well as a general API to create graphs within plugins and scripts.
Prior to public release graphing had been provided by a legacy graphing package which was un-releasable publicly due to
Prior to initial public release, graphing had been provided by a legacy graphing package which was un-releasable publicly due to
licensing issues.</P>
<P>Graphs are displayed in a new tabbed graph window. Current location and selection of vertices are kept in sync with other
@ -84,11 +90,23 @@
layout algorithms to examine the program structure. In addition, Graphs can be exported in several standard graph formats, such as
CSV, GRAPHML, GML, JSON, and VISIO. The exported file can then be imported into external tools.</P>
<P>The graphing capability is implemented by a general service mechanism allowing other graph providers to be implemented to support
a favorite graphing tool, however, users will most likely be satisfied with the new default implementation.
There will be a follow up capabilities such as graph specific popup actions on the the nodes and edges that can be added by
<P>The graphing capability is implemented by a general service mechanism allowing other graph providers to be implemented
to support a favorite graphing tool, however, users will most likely be satisfied with the new default implementation.
There will be follow up capabilities such as graph specific popup actions on the the nodes and edges that can be added by
the creator of the graph before display. As in everything, the Ghidra team is interested in any feedback you might provide
on this new capability.</P>
<H2>JAVA based Univeral PDB Reader/Analzyer/Loader</H2>
<P>Added a new platform-independent PDB Reader/Analyzer/Loader that has the ability to process
raw PDB files and apply extracted information to a program. Written in Java, PDBs can be utilized on any supported
platform, not just on Windows as in prior Ghidra versions. PDBs can be applied during analysis
or by loading and applying the PDB before analysis. Information from PDBs can be force-loaded into a program
with a mismatched PDB signature, which is very useful for extracting data types to be used with the
program from a PDB related to that program. Loading the PDB utilizes a new underlying Universal
Reader API.</P>
<P>The PDB Reader and Analyzer capabilities are an evolutionary development and are expected to be
expanded in future releases. We expect to improve this feature over time, adding to its capabilities
and fixing bugs. If the new PDB Analyzer causes issues, you can turn it off and use the original PDB Analyzer.</P>
<H2>Dynamic Modules: OSGI model for scripting</H2>
<P>A change to scripting brings a powerful form of dynamic extensibilty to Ghidra scripting, where Java source code is (re)compiled, loaded, and
@ -96,25 +114,65 @@
up code into modules. To support modularity while preserving the dynamic nature of scripts, Ghidra uses OSGi. The new feature
provides better script change detection, external jar dependencies, script lifecycle management, and modularity.</P>
<P>To find out more, bring up Help contents in Ghidra, and search for OSGi or Bundles.</P>
<H2>JAVA based Univeral PDB</H2>
<P>Automatically applies. Extract data types. Mismatched PDB's. More to come.</P>
<P>Reader API</P>
<H2>Decompiler</H2>
<P>There have been numerous changes to the decompiler addressing quality, readability, and usability. Decompilation has been improved by:
<ul style="padding-left:80px">
<li>Fewer Casts - The decompiler can better recognize lower precision operations performed with bigger registers, allowing it to eliminate
extraneous casts and concatenations.</li>
<li>Better Strings - All the alternate string formats and encodings recognized by Ghidra are now displayed properly by the decompiler,
and string references contained inside larger strings are better recognized</li>
<li>Controllable Namespace Info - Namespace information, as configured by the user, can now be displayed as part of rendering symbols in decompiler output.
The default minimal display configuration will print only the minimal number of path
elements necessary to uniquely resolve the symbol within the current scope.</li>
<li>Arrays - Analysis of array expressions in the decompiler has improved, simplifying many new optimized array access forms.</li>
</P>
</ul>
<P>The decompiler GUI as also been enhanced with the addition of multiple highlights of varying color, called secondary highlights. In addition,
the Decompiler's Auto Create/Fill Structure commands incorporate data-type information from function prototypes
and will override undefined or more general data-types with discovered data-types that are more specific.</P>
<P>There is re-writen more comprehensive Decompiler documentation too!</P>
<H2>Performance Improvements</H2>
<P>There have been major performance improvements in both analysis and the display or filtering of information within GUI components.
These changes are most notable on large binaries, with reports of improvements from 24 plus hours to under an hour for analysis. Some operations
were done very inefficiently such that the end user might give up on analysis. Please report if you notice any severe performance issues
or binaries that take a large amount of time to process, if you can find an example binary that is easily obtainable that reproduces
the issue we can identify the root cause and hopefully improve it. There are some continued sore performance areas we are still working
or binaries that take a large amount of time to process. If you can find an example binary that is easily obtainable that reproduces
the issue, the root cause can be identified and hopefully improved. There are some continued sore performance areas we are still working
such as the non-returning function analyzer. We hope you will find the binary analysis speed and interactivity much improved.</P>
<P>Some specific areas of improvement are binaries with rich data type information, RTTI information, Exception records, large number
<P>Some specific areas of improvement are binaries with rich data type information, RTTI information, exception records, large number
of bytes, large number of defined symbols, and many symbols at a single address.</P>
<H2>Function Identification Improvements</H2>
<P>Function Identification databases have been re-created from scratch, including new information for Visual Studio 2017 and 2019 libraries.
The databases have been cleaned and should overall result in more matches with fewer mis-matched or multiple matches for identified functions.
In addition the FID libraries had to be rebuilt from scratch due to errors or differences in instruction set decode (especially in the 64-bit X86)
with prior versions of Ghidra. The FID is sensitive to the actual instruction bytes, the mnemonic, register, and number of operands.</P>
<P>There are several new improvements that have been identified that will be added in a future release. Until then to get an even better increased
positive match rate, turn on the <i>Shared Return Calls Analyzer</i> option <i>Assume Contiguous Functions Only</i>, and possibly <i>Allow Conditional Jumps</i>.
For normal clean non-heavily optimized, non-malware or obfuscated binaries, these options should cause few issues.</P>
<H2>Symbol Demangling</H2>
<P>Both GNU and Microsoft symbol de-mangling has been greatly improved resulting in fewer unmangled symbols with better function signature recovery.</P>
<H2>Processor Models</H2>
<P>Several new processor specifications have been added, from very old processors to more recent: CP1600, M6809, M8C, RISC-V, V850.</P>
<P>Note: the Elan EM78xxx just missed the 9.2 cutoff, but should appear shortly.</P>
<P>Many improvements and bug fixes have been made to existing processor
specifications: ARM, AARCH64, AVR8, CRC16C, PIC24/30, SH2, SH4, TriCore, X86, XGATE,
6502, 68K, 6805, M6809, 8051, and others. Of note, the AARCH64 has been updated to support all v8.6 spec instructions.
Many improvements have been contributed by the Ghidra
community, while others were discovered and fixed using a currently internal tool which automates fuzzing
of individual instructions against an external emulator or debugger. We hope to put the tool
out in a near term future release.</P>
<H2>Processor Specification</H2>
<P>Minor changes have been made to the Build process of the Sleigh Editor. For those trying to build it from scratch the
instructions are a little clearer and should work correctly. In addition the new popcount operator is supported.
<P>Minor changes have been made to the build process of the Sleigh Editor. For those trying to build it from scratch the
instructions are a little clearer and should work correctly. In addition the new POPCOUNT operator is supported.
For those modifying or studying sleigh processor specifications, who were unaware of the Sleigh Editor, we encourage
you to give it a try. We suggest you install/run the Sleigh Editor in a separate Eclipse installation, possibly the Eclipse
you use with the Ghidra runtime, from the one you are using with the entire Ghidra source code base imported.
@ -124,47 +182,20 @@
the Xtra SleighDevTools project. The plugin integrates with an external disassembler such as binutils, and provides a code browser
field that displays the disassembly from an external disassembler, such as bintutils, at each instruction or undefined byte in the listing.
The only external disassembler integration provided is binutils, however it is possible to add support for additional external disassemblers.
Previously the External Disassembler had trouble with instruction sets which have alternate mode set of instruction
Previously the External Disassembler had trouble with instruction sets which have an alternate mode set of instruction
such as Thumb or MicroMips. The working aide field has new configuration files to feed different options to the external disassembler
to choose the correct alternate encoding set. This also works well with several scripts that also aide in processor development such as
the <i>CompareSleighExternal</i> script.</P>
<P>A new pcode operation POPCOUNT is supported in sleigh processor specifications, this was mainly added to deal with instructions
<P>A new pCode operation POPCOUNT is supported in sleigh processor specifications. POPCOUNT was mainly added to deal with instructions
that needed to compute the parity of an operation.
In addition, the Sleigh compiler error messages have been reworked to be more comprehensible, consistent in format layout, and to provide
correct line numbers as close to the error as possible. In addition, several cases have been caught during compilation that previously would
pass compilation but cause issues during use of the processor.</P>
<H2>Function Identification Improvements</H2>
<P>Function Identification databases have been recreated from scratch, including new information for Visual Studio 2017 and 2019 libraries.
The databases have been cleaned and should overall result in more matches with fewer mis-matched or multiple matches for identified functions.
In addition the FID libraries had to be rebuilt from scratch due to errors or differences in instruction set decode (especially in the 64-bit X86)
with prior versions of Ghidra. The FID is sensitive to the actual instruction bytes, the mnemonic, register, and number of operands.</P>
<P>There are several new improvements that have been identified that will be added in a future release. Until then to get an even better increased
positive match rate to turn on the Shared Return Calls Analyzer option Assume Contiguous Functions Only, and possibly Allow Conditional Jumps.
For normal cleanly non-heavily optimized, non-malware or obfuscated binaries, these options should cause few issues.</P>
<H2>Symbol Demangling</H2>
<P>Both GNU and Microsoft symbol de-mangling has been greatly improved resulting in fewer unmangled symbols and better function signature recovery.</P>
<H2>Decompiler</H2>
<H2>Languages</H2>
<P>Several new processor specifications added, from very old processors to more recent: CP1600, M6809, M8C, RISC-V, V850.</P>
<P>Many improvements and bug fixes have been made to existing processor
specifications: ARM, AARCH64, AVR8, CRC16C, PIC24/30, SH2, SH4, TriCore, X86, XGATE,
6502, 68K, 6805, M6809, 8051, and others. Of note, the AARCH64 has been updated to support all v8.6 spec instructions.
Many of the processor improvements have been contributed by the Ghidra
community. Others were discovered and fixed with a currently internal tool which automates fuzzing
of individual instructions against an external emulator or debugger. We hope to put the tool
out in a near term future release.</P>
<H2>Dynamic Analysis Framework - Debugger</H2>
<P>The debugger is very much still in progress. You may have seen some commits, in the Ghidra github master branch, to get in sync with the debugger.
Stay tuned for more to come soon after the 9.2 release.</P>
<P>The debugger is very much still in progress. You may have seen some commits, in the Ghidra GitHub master branch, to get in sync with the debugger.
Stay tuned for more on the Dynamic Analysis Framework soon after the 9.2 release.</P>
<H2>Bug Fixes and Enhancements</H2>
<P> Numerous other bug fixes and improvements are fully listed in the <a href="ChangeHistory.html">ChangeHistory</a> file.</P>
@ -290,8 +321,8 @@
<H2>Ghidra Released to the Public!</H2>
<P>In case you missed it, in March 2019, a public version of Ghidra was released for the first time. Soon after,
the full buildable source was made available as an open source project on the NSA github page. The response from the Ghidra
Open Source community has been overwhelmingly positive. We welcome contributions from github including bug fixes,
the full buildable source was made available as an open source project on the NSA GitHub page. The response from the Ghidra
Open Source community has been overwhelmingly positive. We welcome contributions from GitHub including bug fixes,
requests, scripts, processor modules, and plugins. </P>
<H2> Bug Fixes and Enhancements</H2>