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.
This is a preview of what is coming in the future Ghidra 12.0 release.
NOTE: Ghidra Server: The Ghidra 12.0 server is compatible with Ghidra 9.2 and later Ghidra clients although the presence of any newer link-files within a repository may not be handled properly by client versions prior to 12.0 which lack support for the new storage format. Ghidra 12.0 clients which introduce new link-files into a project will not be able to add such files into version control if connected to older Ghidra Server versions.
Support for link-files within a Ghidra Project has been significantly expanded with this release and with it a new file storage type has been introduced which can create some incompatibilities if projects and repositories containing such files are used by older version of Ghidra or the Ghidra Server.
Previously only external folder and file links were supported through the use of a Ghidra URL. With 12.0 the ability to establish internal folder and file links has been introduced. The new storage format avoids the use of a database and relies only on a light-weight property file. Internal project links also allow for either absolute or relative links. Due to the fact that Ghidra allows a folder or file to have the same pathname, some ambiguities can result. It is highly recommended that the use of conflicting folder and file pathnames be avoided.
The use of internally linked folders and files allows batch import processing to more accurately reflect the native file-system and its use of symbolic links which allow for the same content to be referenced by multiple paths. Allowing this within a Ghidra project can avoid the potential for importing content multiple times with the different paths and simply import once with additional link-files which reference it. How best to leverage links very much depends on the end-user's needs and project file management preferences. Special care must be taken when defining or traversing link-files to avoid external and circular references.
Additional Ghidra API methods have been provided or refined on the following classes to leverage
link-files: DomainFolder, DomainFile, LinkFile, LinkHandler, DomainFileFilter,
DomainFileIterator, etc.
...TO BE CONTINUED...
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 11.4 is fully backward compatible with project data from previous releases. However, programs and data type archives which are created or modified in 11.4 will not be usable by an earlier Ghidra version.
IMPORTANT: Ghidra 11.4 requires at minimum JDK 21 to run.
IMPORTANT: To use the Debugger or do a full source distribution build, you will need Python3 (3.9 to 3.13 supported) installed on your system.
NOTE: There have been reports of certain features causing the XWindows server to crash. A fix
for CVE-2024-31083 in X.org software in April 2024 introduced a regression, which has been fixed
in xwayland 23.2.6 and xorg-server 21.1.13. If you experience any crashing of Ghidra, most likely
causing a full logout, check if your xorg-server has been updated to at least the noted version.
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 Getting Started document 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.
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: 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.
A new "Search and Replace" feature allows searching for string patterns in a wide variety of Ghidra elements and replacing that text with a different text sequence. Using this feature, many different Ghidra elements can be renamed all at once including labels, functions, name-spaces, parameters, data-types, field names, and enum values. This feature also supports regular expressions (including capture groups). After initiating a search and replace, a results table is displayed with a list of items that match the search. From this table, the replace actions can be applied in bulk or individually, one item at a time as they are reviewed.
Extended support for using taint engines, particularly CTADL (https://github.com/sandialabs/ctadl) and AngryGhidra (https://github.com/Nalen98/AngryGhidra), from the decompiler. Allows users to mark pcode varnodes as sources and sinks, displaying paths from sources to sinks as both address selections in the disassembly and token selections in the decompiler.
A new capability to build a docker image that demonstrates Ghidra's various entrypoint executions for headless,
ghidra-server, bsim-server, bsim, pyghidra, and gui within the docker container has been included. The Docker
image can be used as is, or can be tailored to your workflow needs. Configuration such as the base
image (linux distro), additional packages, and more is possible using Docker.
See the docker/README.md for information about building a docker image for Ghidra and running within the Ghidra container.
There have been numerous improvements, extensions for new targets, better launching and configuration, and bug fixes to the debugger.
Constant and Stack analysis time has been greatly decreased through algorithm improvements and better threading. There has been additional work to loosen locking of the program database where possible. By locking only when necessary, multiple threads can better analyze the program and interaction with the GUI during analysis should be more responsive.
Golang binary analysis analysis has been improved.
PostgreSQL for BSim has been updated to version 15.13 and the JDBC driver to 42.7.6. This resolves issues with building PostgreSQL server on newer releases of Linux and compiler toolchains which compile with -std=c23 option by default. In addition, building of PostgreSQL for linux_arm_64 and mac_arm_64 based platforms is supported.
Numerous other new features, improvements, and bug fixes are fully listed in the Change History file.