Tooling

The everyday toolbox for writing, reading, and debugging machine code.

Assemble and link

$ nasm -felf64 prog.asm -o prog.o
$ ld prog.o -o prog
$ as prog.s -o prog.o && ld prog.o -o prog

Disassemble

$ objdump -d -M intel prog
$ objdump -d -M intel -j .text prog
$ ndisasm -b 64 prog
$ readelf -a prog

Debug

$ gdb ./prog
$ gdb -tui ./prog
$ gef --args ./prog
$ pwndbg ./prog

Reverse-engineering platforms

Tool	Notes
radare2	Open-source RE framework; CLI + r2pipe automation.
rizin	Friendly fork of radare2; ships with the Cutter GUI.
ghidra	NSA’s open-source decompiler + SRE platform; great UI.
ida	Industry-standard commercial disassembler / decompiler.
binary ninja	Commercial; strong API for analysis plugins.
hopper	macOS / Linux commercial disassembler.

Static / dynamic analysis

• strings, pull printable text out of a binary.

• nm, list symbols.

• ltrace / strace, trace library / syscall calls.

• perf, CPU profiler with hardware-counter samples.

• valgrind, memory error detection (Memcheck) and call profiler (Callgrind).

• Compiler Explorer, compile and diff assembly across compilers, languages, and flags.

References

• binutils, as, ld, objdump, nm, readelf.

• pwntools, exploit-dev framework with shellcode helpers.

• O, objdump, od, etc. in the command reference.