Reverse engineering C++ - best tools and approach [closed]

Question

I am sorry - C++ source code can be seen as implementation of a design, and with reverse-engineering I mean getting the design back. It seems most of you have read it as getting C++ source from binaries. I have posted a more precise question at Understanding a C++ codebase by generating UML - tools&methology

---

I think there are many tools that can reverse-engineer C++ (source-code), but usually it is not so easy to make sense of what you get out.

Have somebody found a good methodology?

I think one of the things I might want to see for example is the GUI-layer and how it is separated (or not from the rest). Think the tools should somehow detect packages, and then let me manually organize it.

Answer 1

To my knowledge, there are no reliable tools that can reverse-engineer compiled C++.

Moreover, I think it should be near impossible to construct such a device. A compiled C++ program becomes nothing more than machine language instructions. In order to kn ow how that's mapped to C++ constructs, you need to know the compiler, compiler settings, libraries included, etc ad infinitum.

Why do you want such a thing? Depending on what you want it for, there may be other ways to accomplish what you're really after.

Answer 2

While it isn't a complete solution. You should look into IDA Pro and Hexrays.

It is more for "reverse engineering" in the traditional sense of the phrase. As in, it will give you a good enough idea of what the code would look like in a C like language, but will not (cannot) provide fully functioning source code.

What it is good for, is getting a good understanding of how a particular segment (usually a function) works. It is "user assisted", meaning that it will often do a lot of dereferences of offsets when there is a really a struct or class. At which point, you can supply the decompiler with a struct definition (classes are really just structs with extra things like v-tables and such) and it will reanalyze the code with the new type information.

Like I said, it isn't perfect, but if you want to do "reverse engineering" it is the best solution I am aware of. If you want full "decompilation" then you are pretty much out of luck.