The emulator in Ghidra is really cool. I’ve been improving my Wasm processor module to support better emulation, and I’ve made use of their comprehensive specification tests to validate the implementation.
One thing that I run into a fair bit is the tension between keeping the decompiler output sane vs. implementing every nuance of a particular instruction. Trying to emulate every quirk turns into very complex P-code, which can clutter up the decompiled output. One strategy is to use custom operations (pcodeops) plus an emulator helper, but this makes the operation totally opaque to the decompiler, so it’s not suitable for common instructions.
In general though it’s super cool to have this kind of functionality available. It will be awesome if Ghidra can someday be a powerful tool for dynamic reverse engineering, not just static reversing.
One thing that I run into a fair bit is the tension between keeping the decompiler output sane vs. implementing every nuance of a particular instruction. Trying to emulate every quirk turns into very complex P-code, which can clutter up the decompiled output. One strategy is to use custom operations (pcodeops) plus an emulator helper, but this makes the operation totally opaque to the decompiler, so it’s not suitable for common instructions.
In general though it’s super cool to have this kind of functionality available. It will be awesome if Ghidra can someday be a powerful tool for dynamic reverse engineering, not just static reversing.