Radare2 was created in February 2006,[3] aiming to provide a free and simple command-line interface for a hexadecimal editor supporting 64 bit offsets to make searches and recovering data from hard-disks, for forensic purposes. Since then, the project has grown with the aim changed to provide a complete framework for analyzing binaries while adhering to several principles of the Unix philosophy.[4]
In 2009, the decision was made to completely rewrite it, to get around limitations in the initial design. Since then, the project continued to grow,[5] and attracted several resident developers.
In 2016, the first r2con took place in Barcelona,[6][7] gathering more than 100 participants, featuring various talks about various features and improvements of the framework.
Radare2 has been the focus of multiple presentations at several high-profile security conferences, like the recon,[8]hack.lu,[9]33c3.[3]
Features and usage
Radare2 has a steep learning curve since its main executable binaries are operated by command line and does not have a GUI by itself. Originally built around a hexadecimal editor, it has now a multitude of tools and features, and also bindings for several languages.[10] Meanwhile it has a WebUI[11] and the official graphical user interface project for Radare2 is called Iaito.[12]
Static analysis
Radare2 is able to assemble and disassemble a lot of software programs, mainly executables, but it can also perform binary diffing with graphs,[13] extract information like relocations symbols, and various other types of data. Internally, it uses a NoSQLdatabase named sdb to keep track of analysis information that can be inferred by Radare2 or manually added by the user. Since it is able to deal with malformed binaries, it has also been used by software security researchers for analysis purposes.[14][15][16]
Dynamic analysis
Radare2 has a built-in debugger that is lower-level than GDB.[citation needed] It can also interface with GDB and WineDBG[17] to debug Windows binaries on other systems. In addition, it can also be used as a kernel debugger with VMWare.
Software exploitation
Since it features a disassembler and a low-level debugger, Radare2 can be useful to developers of exploits. The software has features which assist in exploit development, such as a ROP gadget search engine and mitigation detection. Because of the software's flexibility and support for many file formats, it is often used by capture the flag teams[18][19] and other security-oriented personnel.[20]
Radare2 can also assist in creating shellcodes with its 'ragg2' tool, similar to metasploit.
