capa: add ARM support to IDA Pro, Ghidra, and/or Binary Ninja backends

[hcnpeiris]

Hi @williballenthin, @mike-hunhoff, @mr-tz ,

I’m Nipun, a cybersecurity enthusiast and web developer, and I’m interested in contributing to capa, specifically to the project “Add ARM support to IDA Pro, Ghidra, and/or Binary Ninja backends”

Just to clarify, do we need to request issue assignment before working on it? If so, I’d like to work on Issue #1909

[mike-hunhoff]

Hi @hcnpeiris , please comment on any issue you'd be interested in working and we'll get you assigned to it 😄

[hcnpeiris]

Thank you, @mike-hunhoff . I have started working on capa#1787 and have also added a draft PR.

[mike-hunhoff]

Please add a comment to the issue so I can assign it to you

[hcnpeiris]

I’ve added a comment to the issue. Thanks!

[hcnpeiris]

@mike-hunhoff @mr-tz
I noticed there is a project idea to migrate the Ghidra backend from Ghidrathon to PyGhidra. Would it be possible to combine this with the ARM support project into a single GSoC project?

Instead of adding ARM support to all backends (Binary Ninja, IDA Pro, Ghidra), the project could focus on migrating the Ghidra backend to PyGhidra and adding ARM support only for the Ghidra backend.

Since the current backend would be upgraded for ARM support while still using Ghidrathon, it may need to be rewritten again when switching to PyGhidra?

[mike-hunhoff]

Hi @hcnpeiris , I appreciate your thoughts on this. We'd like to keep these projects separate simply because combining them would increase the scope beyond what a single 12-week GSoC project should entail. You are correct to highlight that adding ARM support to capa's Ghidra backend before completing the migration to PyGhidra may be putting the cart before the horse. However, both PyGhidra and Ghidrathon expose the standard Ghidra programming APIs so we expect minimal code changes needed to run code written for Ghidrathon in PyGhidra (and vice versa), assuming we stick to the standard Ghidra programming APIs.

[hcnpeiris]

Hi @mike-hunhoff Thank you for the clarification.😊
I will focus on adding ARM support to capa’s Ghidra backend. How can I get feedback on my proposal?