Why an alpha version?

• version: Chrysalide is in development for a long period, and it is time to rub the software against the outside world. The idea is to submit it to the competition and a wider range of users, in order to boost its development.
• alpha: Chrysalide is not very well-tried for now. Sometimes it crashes, and still has many bugs (Python memory leaks or Cairo impressions for example).

Brief History

Chrysalide is a software developed on free time. Thus, the curve of its evolution is not regular in time.

Initially, the program was created because the objdump command does not display the strings corresponding to a given address, during the disassembly of an ELF file.

So a tiny need of an alternative tool did exist.

The extension of this little tool gave birth mid-2008 to a software called OpenIDA, whose name sets the tone (even if the introductory version submitted to Gna! was really poor).

Time passed, and developments were spreading in every directions: incomplete support of multiple architectures (x86, ARM, MIPS, Java), multiple definitions of the code display component, etc. In short, a lot of energy for little results...

Then OpenIDA refocused on a more defined area, embedded systems - and specifically Android to start - and was renamed early 2012 to prepare a release.

And now...

The release is here, but Chrysalide is not yet ready for a daily use. At best, it can be used for further analysis, but it still lacks a lot of useful features for other uses; the Android Challenge of Fortinet could not be resolved completely with Chrysalis for instance.

While becoming more flexible toward the freeze of new features that preceded the preparation of this alpha version, the next steps will be:

• the stabilization of the program and the fix of memory leaks.
• the hunt of functional bugs which are still present.

The medium or long term target is to build an analytical tool capable of handling binaries such as those pointed by @AcidRampage.

To come with these future developments, Chrysalis now has a website built on MediaWiki.

Posted on December 28, 2012 at 19:31.