Ghidra
Ghidra (pronounced gee-druh;[3] /ˈɡiːdrə/[4]) is a free and open source reverse engineering tool developed by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States. The binaries were released at RSA Conference in March 2019; the sources were published one month later on GitHub.[5] Ghidra is seen by many security researchers as a competitor to IDA Pro.[6] The software is written in Java using the Swing framework for the GUI. The decompiler component is written in C++, and is therefore usable in a stand-alone form.[7]
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![]() Disassembly of a file in Ghidra  | |
| Original author(s) | NSA | 
|---|---|
| Initial release | March 5, 2019 | 
| Stable release | 10.4[1]
   / September 29, 2023  | 
| Repository | github | 
| Written in | Java, C++ | 
| License | Apache License 2.0 / Public domain[2] | 
| Website | ghidra-sre | 
Scripts to perform automated analysis with Ghidra can be written in Java or Python (via Jython),[8][9] though this feature is extensible and support for other programming languages is available via community plugins.[10] Plugins adding new features to Ghidra itself can be developed using a Java-based extension framework.[11]
History
    
Ghidra's existence was originally revealed to the public via Vault 7 in March 2017, but the software itself remained unavailable until its declassification and official release two years later.[5]
In June 2019, Coreboot began to use Ghidra for its reverse engineering efforts on firmware-specific problems following the open source release of the Ghidra software suite.[12]
Ghidra can be used, officially,[13][14] as a debugger since Ghidra 10.0. Ghidra's debugger supports debugging user-mode Windows programs via WinDbg, and Linux programs via GDB.[15]
See also
    
    
References
    
- "Releases · NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-09-29.
 - "ghidra/NOTICE". GitHub.com. Retrieved 13 April 2019.
 - "Frequently asked questions". GitHub.com. Retrieved 7 March 2019.
 - "Come Get Your Free NSA Reverse Engineering Tool!". YouTube.com. Archived from the original on 2021-12-15. Retrieved 17 May 2019.
 - Newman, Lily Hay. "The NSA Makes Ghidra, a Powerful Cybersecurity Tool, Open Source". Wired. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
 - Cimpanu, Catalin. "NSA releases Ghidra, a free software reverse engineering toolkit". ZDNet. Retrieved 2019-03-07.
 - e. g. as Plugin for Radare2 oder Rizin.
 - "Ghidra Scripting Class". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
 - "Three Heads are Better Than One: Mastering NSA's Ghidra Reverse Engineering Tool" (PDF). GitHub. Retrieved 2019-09-30.
 - "Ghidraal". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
 - "Ghidra Advanced Development Class". GitHub. Retrieved 2023-02-19.
 - "Coreboot Project Is Leveraging NSA Software To Help With Firmware Reverse Engineering".
 - "Compiled/built Ghidra 9.3 for Windows with Debugger feature by Galician R&D Center in Advanced Telecommunications employees".
 - "Analizando el depurador de Ghidra". 11 March 2021.
 - "What's new in Ghidra 10.0".
 - "Rob Joyce on Twitter". Twitter.com. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
 - "List of Processors Supported by Ghidra". Github.com. Retrieved 29 September 2023.
 

