# Ghidra: NSA Reverse Engineering Software

Ghidra is a software reverse engineering (SRE) framework developed by NSA's Research Directorate. This framework includes a suite of full-featured, high-end software analysis tools that enable users to analyze compiled code on a variety of platforms including Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Capabilities include disassembly, assembly, decompilation, debugging, emulation, graphing, and scripting, along with hundreds of other features. Ghidra supports a wide variety of processor instruction sets and executable formats and can be run in both user-interactive and automated modes. Users may also develop their own Ghidra plug-in components and/or scripts using the exposed API. In addition there are numerous ways to extend Ghidra such as new processors, loaders/exporters, automated analyzers, and new visualizations.

In support of NSA's Cybersecurity mission, Ghidra was built to solve scaling and teaming problems on complex SRE efforts and to provide a customizable and extensible SRE research platform. NSA has applied Ghidra SRE capabilities to a variety of problems that involve analyzing malicious code and generating deep insights for NSA analysts who seek a better understanding of potential vulnerabilities in networks and systems.

# What's New in Ghidra 11.1

## The not-so-fine print: Please Read!

This release includes new features, enhancements, performance improvements, quite a few bug fixes, and many pull-request contributions. Thanks to all those who have contributed their time, thoughts, and code. The Ghidra user community thanks you too!

Ghidra 11.x is fully backward compatible with project data from previous releases. However, programs and data type archives which are created or modified in 11.x will not be usable by an earlier Ghidra version.

This distribution requires at minimum JDK 17 to run, but can also run under JDK 21.

NOTE: Each build distribution will include native components (e.g., decompiler) for at least one platform (e.g., Windows x86-64). If you have another platform that is not included in the build distribution, you can build native components for your platform directly from the distribution. See the Ghidra Installation Guide for additional information. Users running with older shared libraries and operating systems (e.g., CentOS 7.x) may also run into compatibility errors when launching native executables such as the Decompiler and GNU Demangler which may necessitate a rebuild of native components.

IMPORTANT: To use the Debugger, you will need Python3 (3.7 to 3.12 supported) installed on your system.

NOTE: Ghidra Server: The Ghidra 11.x server is compatible with Ghidra 9.2 and later Ghidra clients. Ghidra 11.x clients are compatible with all 10.x and 9.x servers. Although, due to potential Java version differences, it is recommended that Ghidra Server installations older than 10.2 be upgraded. Those using 10.2 and newer should not need a server upgrade.

NOTE: Any programs imported with a Ghidra beta version or code built directly from source code outside of a release tag may not be compatible, and may have flaws that won't be corrected by using this new release. Any programs analyzed from a beta or other local master source build should be considered experimental and re-imported and analyzed with a release version.

Programs imported with previous release versions should upgrade correctly through various automatic upgrade mechanisms. However, there may be improvements or bug fixes in the import and analysis process that will provide better results than prior Ghidra versions. You might consider comparing a fresh import of any program you will continue to reverse engineer to see if the latest Ghidra provides better results.

## Debugger

ATTENTION: Please delete and re-import the default Debugger tool!

We are introducing a new debugger connection system called Trace RMI. This is replacing the older system, which we are calling the Recorder system.

The most noticeable difference will be a new menu for launching targets. It is very similar to the previous system, but with some key differences:

> - Connection and launching are no longer separated into two different configuration panels. There is one panel to launch your target.
> - Ghidra will no longer attempt to launch blindly with defaults. The first time you launch a program, you must select a launcher and configure it.
> - After the initial launch you can re-launch with a previous configuration, without requiring a prompt.

The next most noticeable difference will be the replacement of the Interpreter window with the Terminal window. This is a proper VT-100 terminal emulator, so the experience will be much like, if not identical to, how you'd debug in a plain terminal, except embedded into and integrated with Ghidra. Some notable improvements that brings:

> - Tab completion, history, etc., should all work as implemented by the connected debugger's command-line interface.
> - When the target is running, it has proper I/O in that terminal.
> - If connecting goes poorly for some reason, the debugger's command-line interface is likely still operational.

You may also notice the replacement of the Debugger Targets window with the Connection Manager window, and the replacement of the Objects window with the Model window. These are operationally very similar to their previous counterparts.

For Power Users: The launchers are just shell scripts on Linux and macOS, and batch files on Windows. We have provided plugins for integrating with GDB, LLDB, and the Windows Debugger. So long as your target works with one of these debuggers, orchestrating another kind of target is mostly a matter of creating a new shell script. This is usually accomplished by using the most similar one as a template and then trying it out in Ghidra. When errors occur, Ghidra will inform you of what progress it made before it failed, and the Terminal should display any error messages produced by your script.

For Developers: Developers may notice that debugger integration is now all done using Python 3. We have specified a new protocol we call Trace RMI, which provides client access to Ghidra's trace databases over TCP. It uses protobuf and is substantially simpler than the previous GADP protocol. We have provided the client implementation in Python 3. Existing integrations can be fairly easily extended, if necessary. For example, see the support for Wine we included in our GDB plugin.

If you wish to integrate a completely new debugger, and it has a Python 3 API, then things are relatively straightforward, so long as the debugger provides the events and information that Ghidra expects. Use an existing plugin as a template or reference and have fun. If the new debugger does not have Python 3 bindings, the protobuf specification is available, so the client can be ported, if necessary.

IMPORTANT: To use the new Trace RMI system, you will need Python3 (3.7 to 3.12 supported) installed on your system. Additional setup may be required for each type of debug connection. Press F1 in the debug connector's launch dialog for more information.

Overall, we believe this a substantially more approachable system than our previous DebuggerObjectModel SPI used in the Recorder system.

## GhidraGo

GhidraGo is an experimental feature that adds integration support for Ghidra URL's and Ghidra Tools. GhidraGO can now process GhidraURL's that locate folders within a project instead of only programs. For example a remote GhidraURL locating a project folder will open a read only view of the repository in the front end tool and select the folder from the URL. If the GhidraURL refers to a folder in the currently open active project, then the folder is selected within the active project's view instead of a read only view.

## PDB

The PDB data type processing changes from release 11.0 have been further enhanced, simplifying the processing model and reducing the number of datatype conflicts. The algorithm for choosing the primary symbol at an address has been improved to provide the richest possible information. The PDB Universal Analyzer has been split into multiple analyzers so that PDB function processing can follow interim analyzers that specialize in finding code. Lastly, the Load PDB Task has been improved to schedule appropriate follow-on analyzers that are selected in the Analysis Options.

## Version Tracking

Version Tracking Session files may now be added to a shared project repository. Once a version tracking file has been checked in to a project, it must be checked out for exclusive access. For more information, see help found in the Version Tracking's Session Wizard help for more information.

NOTE: Prior to adding a pre-existing VT Session to a shared project repository, it is highly recommended that it first be re-opened and saved. This will upgrade the VT Session internal version to prevent its use with older versions of Ghidra which will not respect the exclusive checkout requirement.

## Mach-O Improvements

Mach-O support continues to improve, adding support for new features as well as filling in some gaps that existed for several years. The latest dyld_shared_cache files use a new format for pointer fixups, which Ghidra now supports. A new GFileSystem has also been implemented to import and/or extract individual Mach-O binaries from Mach-O "file sets" (i.e., kernelcache). A second new GFileSystem has been added which can extract Apple LZFSE-compressed files. Other improvements have also been made to provide more complete markup of Mach-O load commands.

## Swift

Initial support for binaries written in the Swift Programming Language has been added. The new support relies on the native Swift demangler being present on the user's system. Swift is automatically bundled with XCode on macOS, and can be optionally installed on Windows and Linux. See the "Demangler Swift" analyzer options for more information. Type information gathered from the demangled Swift symbol names is used to create corresponding Ghidra data types. This currently works for Swift primitives and structures, but more work needs to be done to include classes and other advanced data types. Swift-specific calling conventions are also applied to demangled Swift functions.

## Usability

There have been many improvements to keyboard only actions and navigation in Ghidra. These changes will be welcome for those who prefer to use the keyboard as much as possible and those needing better accessibility. Improvements include:

> - Standard keyboard navigation should now work in most component windows and dialogs. In general, Tab and <CTRL> Tab will move focus to the next focusable component and <SHIFT> Tab and <CTRL><SHIFT> Tab will move to the previous focusable component. Tab and <SHIFT> Tab do not always work as some components use those keys internally, but <CTRL> Tab, and <SHIFT><CTRL> Tab should work universally.
> - Ghidra now provides some convenient keyboard shortcut actions for transferring focus:
> - <CTRL> F3 - Transfers focus to the next window or dialog.
> - <CTRL><SHIFT> F3 - Transfers focus to the previous window or dialog.
> - <CTRL> J - Transfers focus to the next titled dockable component (titled windows).
> - <CTRL><SHIFT> J - Transfers focus to the previous titled dockable component.
> - All actions can now be accessed via a searchable dialog.
> - Pressing <CTRL> 3 will bring up the actions dialog with the local toolbar, popup and keyboard actions.
> - Pressing <CTRL> 3 a second time will add in all the global actions.
> - Pressing <CTRL> 3 a third time will add in the disabled actions as well.
> - The actions dialog was specifically designed to be easy to use without a mouse. Typing will filter the actions list and the arrow keys allow you to select an action and enter will invoke the selected action

## Other Improvements

Support for the SquashFS filesystem has been added.

A new wildcard assembler API has been added that can generate all possible variants of an instruction with a variety of wildcards for operands. Two new scripts, FindInstructionWithWildcard and WildSleighAssemblerInfo, demonstrate how to use the API. For more information, see help and search for Wildcard Assembler.

A new Runtime Information dialog has replaced the Show VM Memory dialog. The dialog contains more information which can aid in debugging, including version information, classpath, defined properties, environment variables, and more.

The GhidraDev Eclipse plugin has a new wizard for importing an existing Ghidra module source directory. This will work best with Ghidra module projects created against Ghidra 11.1 or later.

Finding references to fields within a structure has been greatly improved. Previously many references to the field would be missed if they occurred within functions calling external functions using the structure, or when the field was used only in local variables dynamically generated by the decompiler.

Golang versions 17 thru 22 are now supported.

DWARF5 debug format is now supported. In addition, DWARF line number information processing has been incorporated into the base DWARF analyzer and the separate DWARF line number analyzer has been removed.

## Additional Bug Fixes and Enhancements

Numerous other new features, improvements, and bug fixes are fully listed in the ChangeHistory file.

https://www.nsa.gov/ghidra