Next Generation Collaborative Reversing with Ida Pro and CollabREate

Abstract

A major drawback with the use of most reverse engineering tools is that they were not designed with collaboration in mind. Numerous kludgy solutions exist from asynchronous use of the same data files to working on multiple copies of data files all of which quickly diverge, leaving the differences to somehow be reconciled. These methods and existing tools[1] provided a first step towards automated collaboration amongst IDA Pro[2] users, however they suffer from several shortcomings including the fact that tools have failed to keep pace with the evolution of IDA's internal architecture. In this paper the authors present a new collaborative tool, titled collabREate[3], designed to bring nearly effortless collaboration to IDA users.