Ghidra
The NSA's reverse engineering framework, with a decompiler that turns machine code back into readable C.
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4 more ways to get Ghidra
Other download sites
Run by third parties, not by NSA. Prefer the official page above when it works.
Package managers
- Chocolatey
choco install ghidra - Homebrew
brew install ghidra - Flathub
flatpak install flathub org.ghidra_sre.Ghidra
About Ghidra
Ghidra was built by the NSA's Research Directorate and released publicly in 2019, which made a professional-grade decompiler free for the first time. It disassembles, assembles, decompiles, graphs and scripts across a wide range of processor instruction sets and executable formats, on Windows, macOS and Linux.
The decompiler is the part that changed things: it produces C-like pseudocode from a binary, which is enormously faster than reading assembly. Beyond that it was explicitly designed for teams working on large reverse engineering efforts, with shared project servers and version tracking, and it is extensible with Java or Python.
One caution: the project itself warns that certain versions of Ghidra have known security vulnerabilities, so run a current version and be careful what you analyse.
Strengths
- A genuinely capable decompiler producing C-like output, free and open source
- Very wide processor instruction set and executable format support
- Built for teams, with shared projects and version tracking
- Extensible with Java or Python, and scriptable for automated analysis
Limitations
- The project warns that some versions have known security vulnerabilities
- Java-based, and the interface shows it
- A steep learning curve even for people who know assembly
- Distributed as a portable archive rather than an installer, and needs a JDK
Details
- Pricing
- Free · Free and open source under Apache 2.0, released by the NSA.
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Developer
- NSA
- Platforms
- Windows, macOS, Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Reverse engineering a binary when you need a decompiler and cannot pay for IDA
- Categories
- Security tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (Security); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 3 sources on file.