📚 OpenRCE is preserved as a read-only archive. Launched at RECon Montreal in 2005. Registration and posting are disabled.








Flag: Tornado! Hurricane!

 Forums >>  Target Specific - General  >>  Embedded HP-UX - How to start?

Topic created on: January 15, 2009 08:56 CST by rfdes .

Hi..
I am attempting to reverse some embedded HP-UX code and need help.  Here is what I know at this time.
1) I know the memory mapping of the hardware and memory
2) The processor is the M68030
3) The version of HP-UX is approx 9.x
4) pSOS RTOS was used in the firmware

I need to create a signature file for IDA 5.2 to use so that I can retrieve some retrievable disassembly.
What are your suggestions as to how and attack what I am after.  Is there any plugins, etc that would help me get a usable disassembly from my binary/rom file?
thanks
Jim

  aeppert     January 15, 2009 10:36.16 CST
Jim,

Embedded RE is very different from Windows RE.  Everything, within reason, is a one-off even a known OS, such as pSOS may be modified to a virtually unrecognizable state since the original developer ha the full source code.  

Thus, your best bet is to snag a raw copy of the firmware off any removable storage that might be present and begin to look at the header area for any kind of pattern (e.g. loading offset, checksum, size information, etc.)  From there you an then, most likely, successfully load the image into IDA Pro where you will then begin the long and interesting task of fixing the assembly.  

A major first step in firmware, provided you have the starting offset of course, is to find a beginning of the DATA section or a rough beginning as you will rarely, if ever, have a nice ELF header to deal with.  What you will want to build for yourself is a set of IDC scripts (or IDAPython scripts) to look for a typical function prelude and have IDA start building a function automatically there and repeat this process until you are finished with the image.

Beyond that, it all depends on what you want to learn or rebuild from the images you have.  String searches are an obvious step and since there are minimal to any protections on firmware images, you should not have to worry about them being masked in any way.

Good luck.

Note: Registration is required to post to the forums.

There are 31,328 total registered users.


Recently Created Topics
[help] Unpacking VMP...
Mar/12
Reverse Engineering ...
Jul/06
let 'IDAPython' impo...
Sep/24
set 'IDAPython' as t...
Sep/24
GuessType return une...
Sep/20
About retrieving the...
Sep/07
How to find specific...
Aug/15
How to get data depe...
Jul/07
Identify RVA data in...
May/06
Question about memor...
Dec/12


Recent Forum Posts
Finding the procedur...
rolEYder
Question about debbu...
rolEYder
Identify RVA data in...
sohlow
let 'IDAPython' impo...
sohlow
How to find specific...
hackgreti
Problem with ollydbg
sh3dow
How can I write olly...
sh3dow
New LoadMAP plugin v...
mefisto...
Intel pin in loaded ...
djnemo
OOP_RE tool available?
Bl4ckm4n


Recent Blog Entries
halsten
Mar/14
Breaking IonCUBE VM

oleavr
Oct/24
Anatomy of a code tracer

hasherezade
Sep/24
IAT Patcher - new tool for ...

oleavr
Aug/27
CryptoShark: code tracer ba...

oleavr
Jun/25
Build a debugger in 5 minutes

More ...


Recent Blog Comments
nieo on:
Mar/22
IAT Patcher - new tool for ...

djnemo on:
Nov/17
Kernel debugger vs user mod...

acel on:
Nov/14
Kernel debugger vs user mod...

pedram on:
Dec/21
frida.github.io: scriptable...

capadleman on:
Jun/19
Using NtCreateThreadEx for ...

More ...


Imagery
SoySauce Blueprint
Jun 6, 2008

[+] expand

View Gallery (11) / Submit