"Reverse Engineering for Beginners" book
The book is also known as RE4B and "Understanding Assembly Language".
Written by Dennis Yurichev.
(email: book at beginners dot re, discord, twitter, mastodon, github).
News:
[RevEng] Challenge: Ukrainian receipts,
How to start learning reverse engineering in 2025.
Download PDF files
Praise for the book
- I am supposed to teach some intro-to-RE lessons next spring, and
I have begun referring students to the book already.
(Thomas "Halvar Flake" Dullien, Sabre Security, zynamics...)
- Now that Dennis Yurichev has made this book free (libre),
it is a contribution to the world of free knowledge and free education.
(Richard M. Stallman, GNU founder, software freedom activist.)
- Its very well done .. and for free .. amazing.'
(Daniel Bilar, Siege Technologies, LLC.)
- ...excellent and free
(Pete Finnigan, Oracle RDBMS security guru.).
- ... book is interesting, great job!
(Michael Sikorski, author of Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software.)
- ... my compliments for the very nice tutorial!
(Herbert Bos, full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, co-author of Modern Operating Systems (4th Edition).)
- ... It is amazing and unbelievable.
(Luis Rocha, CISSP / ISSAP, Technical Manager, Network & Information Security at Verizon Business.)
- Thanks for the great work and your book.
(Joris van de Vis, SAP Netweaver & Security specialist.)
- ... reasonable intro to some of the techniques. (Mike Stay, teacher at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Georgia, US.)
- I love this book! I have several students reading it at the moment, plan to use it in graduate course.
(Sergey Bratus, Research Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Dartmouth College)
- Dennis @Yurichev has published an impressive (and free!) book on reverse engineering (Tanel Poder, Oracle RDBMS performance tuning expert)
- This book is some kind of Wikipedia to beginners... (Archer, Chinese Translator, IT Security Researcher.)
- First class reference for people wanting to learn reverse engineering. And it's free for all.
(Mikko Hyppönen, F-Secure.)
In Russian:
Also, this book is used at least in:
- Aalto University (archived),
- Auburn University (link, archived, screenshot);
- Bennington College (link, archive, screenshot).
- CEA LIST: Laboratory for Integration of Systems and Technology (link, archived, screenshot);
- Chelyabinsk State University (link; archived, screenshot);
- Coburg University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Coburg) (archived).
- Comenius University in Bratislava (link; archived, screenshot);
- Cork Institute of Technology (link, archived, screenshot).
- Edith Cowan University (link; archived, screenshot).
- George Mason University (archived, screenshot),
- Hasso Plattner Institute (archived);
- Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University (link, screenshot),
- Ivanovo Power Engineering Institute (link; archived, screenshot);
- Johns Hopkins University (archived, screenshot),
- Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (archived, link, screenshot);
- Lancaster University (link, archived, more, screenshot);
- MSU Cyberschool (link, archived, screenshot);
- Masaryk University (link; archived, screenshot);
- Missouri University of Science and Technology (archived);
- Polytechnic University of Milan (link, archive, screenshot);
- Saarland University (archived)
- Sheridan College (link, archived, screenshot).
- Stony Brook University (link; archived, screenshot),
- Technical University of Munich (archived);
- Technion – Israel Institute of Technology (link, screenshot)
- Texas A&M University (archived, screenshot);
- University of Massachusetts Amherst (link, archived, screenshot);
- University of Minnesota (link, screenshot),
- University of Oulu (link; archived, screenshot).
- University of Porto (archived).
- Ural Federal University (link, screenshot),
- West Virginia University at Parkersburg (archived).
- Wydział Matematyki, Informatyki i Mechaniki Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego (archived);
- Xidian University (link, archived, screenshot).
- Zhengzhou University (archived);
- kaspersky.academy (link, screenshot);
- École Normale Supérieure (link 1, link 2, archived 1, archived 2, screenshot);
As seen on...
...
hacker news,
reddit.
Goodreads website,
Supplementary materials
All exercises are moved to standalone website: challenges.re.
Stay tuned!
My blog.
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Printed/published versions of the book
Short video with 4 editions of the printed book.
A picture of 3 editions of the printed book.
Chinese translation
In April 2017, translation to Chinese has been finished by Chinese PTPress publisher.
cover 1, cover 2.
Both scanned volumes are available for download:
volume I,
volume II.
Some kind of review and history behind the translation: http://www.cptoday.cn/news/detail/3155.
The principal translator is Archer, to whom I owe so much.
He was extremely meticulous (in good sense) and reported most of known mistakes and bugs, which is very important to literature like this book.
I'll recommend his services to any other author.
While reading, please thank him for his hard work.
Guys from Antiy Labs has also helped with translation. Here is preface written by them.
Farsi (Persian language) translation
In 2016 the book has been translated by Mohsen Mostafa Jokar (who is also known to Iranian community by his translation of Radare manual).
It is available on the publisher’s website (Pendare Pars).
40 page excerpt.
cover
Registration of the book in National Library of Iran: http://opac.nlai.ir/opac-prod/bibliographic/4473995.
About the translator.
Mohsen Mostafa Jokar is a Linux
administrator and Virtualization Engineer also. He is a Xen Master and
written a Wiki book with the name "Hello Xen Project" that's available
here.
Read more about the book:
1,
2.
About Korean publication
In March 2021, Acorn publishing company (www.acornpub.co.kr) in South Korea did huge amount of work in translating and publishing
my book in Korean language, this is the second edition alrady.
You can order it
here,
here or
here.
The cover.
They are also the Korean translation copyright holder.
So if you want to have a "real" book on your shelf in Korean language and/or
want to support my work, now you may buy it.
