Win32 Assembler Coding for Crackers v11

Most (if not all) of the best hackers, crackers and reverse engineers are also programmers. It is probably impossible to learn RCE well without any knowledge of programming and many of the oldest txt files on cracking would urge the student - "first go away and learn assembler, then come back and read this". This is truer now than ever before as packers and executable protectors use increasingly complex and diverse methods of preventing unpacking, debugging and rebuilding. This has led to cracking groups coding custom tools rather than just relying on debugger, disassembler and tools like ImpREC. It has also led to loaders becoming increasingly popular, a fact echoed by the excellent Cracking with Loaders series from ARTeam. These however are not so easy to understand for beginners without any prior coding knowledge.

I have written this tutorial to fill the gap between the complete beginner and the advanced tutorials on loaders, tracers, etc. Similarly, whilst console based apps and tools may be functional they are far from pretty so my second aim was to illustrate how easy it is to create GUI apps in assembler.

In the spirit of the assembler programming and reversing communities I have re-used and adapted code from a wide variety of sources which are remembered with full credit and gratitude where possible.