Reverse Engineering

Along with emulation and virtual machines discussed elsewhere in this list, reverse engineering tools can help in the isolation, analysis, revision/debugging, execution and portability of the software upon which digital objects depend. For a good discussion of these tools and related practices, see: Eilam, Eldad. Reversing: Secrets of Reverse Engineering. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley, 2005.

• Boomerang: A general, open source, retargetable decompiler of machine code programs.
  http://boomerang.sourceforge.net/
• DUMPBIN - Microsoft (part of 32-bit version of Microsoft Visual C++) - "to provide information about the format and symbols provided in executable, library, and DLL files"
  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/177429
• GDB - GNU Project Debugger
  http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/
• IDA Pro (Interactive Disassmebler) - Data Rescue
  http://www.datarescue.com/
• ILDasm (MSIL Disassembler) - Microsoft - disassmembles a portable executable (PE) file that contains Microsoft intermediate language (MSIL) code, which is the low-level language used in the Microsoft .NET framework
  http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f7dy01k1(VS.80).aspx
• Jdec: Java Decompiler
  http://jdec.sourceforge.net/
• OllyDbg (Oleh Yuschuk) - free "32-bit assembler level analysing debugger for Microsoft Windows. Emphasis on binary code analysis makes it particularly useful in cases where source is unavailable."
  http://www.ollydbg.de/
• PEview (Wayne J. Radburn) - "to view the structure and content of 32-bit Portable Executable (PE) and Component Object File Format (COFF) files which supports the viewing of EXE, DLL, OBJ, LIB, DBG, and other file types"
  http://www.magma.ca/~wjr/
• Program-Transformation.org
  http://www.program-transformation.org/
• SyserDebugger - Syser Software
  http://www.sysersoft.com/
• Sysinternals (purchased by Microsoft in July 2006).
  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ - see especially their System Information utilities: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/systeminformationutilities.mspx
• SmidgeonSoft.
  http://www.smidgeonsoft.com (See especially, PEBrowse Professional Interactive - http://www.smidgeonsoft.prohosting.com/pebrowse-pro-interactive-debugger.html)
• WinDbg (Microsoft) - free debugger for Windows
  http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx