Next Generation Collaborative Reversing

Architecture and Background

DEF CON 16 - Chris Eagle & Tim Vidas: Next Generation Collaborative Reversing with Ida Pro and CollabREate A major drawback with the use of most reverse engineering tools is that they were not designed with collaboration in mind. Numerous kludgy solutions exist from asynchronous use of the same data files to working on multiple copies of data files which quickly diverge leaving the differences to somehow be reconciled. Pedram Amini's Ida Sync provided a first step towards automated collaboration among Ida users however Ida Sync suffers from several shortcomings including the fact that it has failed to keep pace with the evolution of Ida's internal architecture.

Vulnerability Analysis

In this presentation, the authors present a new tool titled collabREate designed to bring nearly effortless collaboration to Ida users. The talk will include discussion of the IDA API and the ways in which it facilitates collaboration along with the ways in which it hinders collaboration. The design of a robust server component, responsible for managing projects and connected clients will also be discussed along with a number of capabilities beyond simple collaboration that are enabled via the collabREate architecture..

Exploitation and Demonstrations

Chris Eagle is the Associate Chairman of the Computer Science Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, CA. A computer engineer/scientist for 23+ years, his research interests include computer network operations, computer forensics and reverse/anti-reverse engineering. He has been a speaker at conferences such as Black Hat, Toorcon, CodeCon, and Shmoocon and is the author of the upcoming "The IDA Pro Book".

Remediation and Defensive Strategies

In his spare time he heads up the Sk3wl of r00t CTF team and can be found pulling all-nighters at Defcon. Tim Vidas is a Research Associate in the Computer Science Department at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). His current primary research focuses around high assurance trusted computing, but interest also strays to digital forensics, reverse engineering, and the like. He maintains several academic affiliations and has previously spoken at conferences such as Shmoocon, CanSecWest, DC3 and HTCIA. In his free time he toys around with digital forensics competitions, CTF exercises, and any other interesting look challenges. For copies of the slides and additional materials please see the DEF CON 16 Archive here: