Top 10 Reverse Engineering Tools For Penetration Testing

Reverse Engineering is a technique where an engineer tried to identify the design and architecture of a final product. There are many tools available to help in achieving the objective.

By using these reverse engineering tools, the software can reveal the original string table, source code, libraries, algorithms, and embedded resources/secrets. This blog lists the Top 10 Reverse Engineering Tools that may be used for Penetration Testing.

(1) Immunity Debugger 

• Most popular debugging tool
• Free
• Both GUI and CLI are available
• CLI is available at the bottom of the GUI
• Help in exploit development
• The interface is easy to understand
• Light-weighted
• Connectivity with fuzzer

(2) OllyDbg

• Developed by Oleh Yuschuk
• Free
• able to attach running program
• help in code review
• user interface available
• just load the binary

(3) Hex-Rays IDA

• Disassembler and Debugger
• Binary code analysis tool

(4) edb debugger

• open source
• cross-platform AArch32/x86/x86-64 debugger
• work on the Linux operating system

(5) x64dbg

• open-source x64/x32 debugger for windows

(6) APKTool

• reverse engineering android apk files
• Syntax: $apktool d test.apk
• free

(7) WinDbg

• free
• used for debugging kernel-mode and user-mode code

(8) gdb

• debugger
• open source
• supports multiple languages like Ada, C, C++, Go, Objective-C, etc.

(9) dexjar

• opensource
• Convert apk format to jar

(10) PEiD

• most common packers, cryptors, and compilers for PE files.
• 470 different signatures in PE files
• No further development of the tool