The IDA Pro Book
The Unofficial Guide to the World's Most Popular Disassembler
Chris Eagle's deep manual on IDA Pro, the disassembler that defined a generation of reverse engineering. Useful even with Ghidra in the picture, since most malware-analysis literature still assumes IDA.
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- Authors
- Chris Eagle
- Published
- 2011
- Publisher
- No Starch Press
- Pages
- 672
- Language
- English
Read this if
Anyone using IDA Pro daily who wants to use it well, plus reverse engineers who need to read older malware-analysis literature where IDA is assumed. The canonical IDA reference.
Skip this if
Beginners with no RE background, or readers fully invested in Ghidra. The book pre-dates the most recent IDA versions and the post-Hex-Rays-acquisition workflow shifts; it's a reference for the core, not a current product manual.
Key takeaways
- IDA's analytical strength comes from how it propagates type information and renames automatically; the book's chapters on signatures and FLIRT explain why senior analysts move fast.
- IDC and IDAPython scripting is the difference between using IDA and weaponising it; the scripting chapters are the highest-leverage part of the book.
- The chapters on debug, plugins, and graph view turn IDA from a static tool into a workflow.
Notes
Pair with Practical Reverse Engineering for the ISA-level depth and with Practical Binary Analysis (Andriesse) for the modern programmatic-analysis layer that IDA scripts plug into. Use the book as a reference, not a read-through; chapters 13-16 (scripting, debugger, plugins) are the practical core.
What to read before
What to read before The IDA Pro Book →Beginner · 2014
Penetration Testing
Georgia Weidman's lab-driven introduction to pentesting, walking the reader from setting up a target environment through scanning, exploitation, post-exploitation, and reporting.
Advanced · 2018
Practical Binary Analysis
Dennis Andriesse on the binary toolchain you can actually script: ELF internals, dynamic taint analysis, symbolic execution and instrumentation with concrete code-along examples.
Intermediate · 2012
Practical Malware Analysis
Still the gold standard textbook for static and dynamic malware analysis on Windows.
What to read next
What to read after The IDA Pro Book →Advanced · 2018
Practical Binary Analysis
Dennis Andriesse on the binary toolchain you can actually script: ELF internals, dynamic taint analysis, symbolic execution and instrumentation with concrete code-along examples.
Advanced · 2009
Les virus informatiques : théorie, pratique et applications
Éric Filiol's reference French-language treatment of computer virology. Formal theory, infection mechanisms, offensive and defensive applications, with academic rigor rare on the topic.
Advanced · 2021
The Hardware Hacking Handbook
Jasper van Woudenberg and Colin O'Flynn (NewAE / ChipWhisperer) on real hardware attacks: bus sniffing, fault injection, side-channel power analysis, and the lab work that turns a black box into a known target.
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