Disassembling Binaries with IDA - [A Reverse Engineering Tutorial]

In my penetration testing training, I'm currently working on a vulnerable machine that doesn't seem to have too many ways in. There are only 2 open ports, both for web services.

I was able to extract a file from the server - a windows binary file - and I was also able to reach a login screen via telnet. So, the vector of attack that I'm currently thinking of is to disassemble the executable and try to find clues with respect to the password for the login screen.

Since I have little experience with decompiling and disassembling, I've been looking for materials about these techniques. To be honest, I've got a bit discouraged, because looking into the disassembled version of the binary, it doesn't make too much sense to me. But that's fine, since I don't know much about these methods.

I'll give it a few days to try and see if I can make anything out of this and if I'm not able to reach a successful resolution, I'll probably watch an in-depth walk-through to penetrate this vulnerable machine.

As I've been looking for good materials, I stumbled across a few Youtube channels and I also found this great tutorial going through the disassembling of a binary. I'd say this is a good start for anyone who wants to make some sense of the intricacies of some binaries and having this skill is very useful if you disassemble viruses, trojans, and other malware.

If you don't have a sample to work on, there are even 'capture the flag' challenges for disassemblers, but we'll get into that at a later time. Until then, you can work your way through this tutorial:

Disassembling Binaries with IDA - [A Reverse Engineering Tutorial]