This blog post is the next episode in the FireEye Labs Advanced
Reverse Engineering (FLARE) team Script Series. Today, we are sharing
something quite unusual. It is not a tool or a virtual machine
distribution, nor is it a plugin or script for a popular reverse
engineering tool or framework. Rather, it is a profile created for a
consumer software application completely unrelated to reverse
engineering or malware analysis… until now. The software is named
make it easy for users to control other software on their computer
using voice commands. With FLARE’s
profile for VoiceAttack, users can completely control IDA Pro
with their voice! Have you ever dreamed of telling IDA Pro to
decompile a function or show you the strings of a binary? Well dream
no more! Not only does our profile give you total control of the
software, it also provides shortcuts and other cool features not
previously available. It’s our hope that providing voice control for
the world’s most popular disassembler will further empower users with
repetitive stress injuries or disabilities to more effectively put
their reverse engineering skills to use with this new accessibility
option as well as helping the community at large work more efficiently.
Check out our video demonstration of some of the features of the
profile to see it in action.
Voice attack is an inexpensive software application that utilizes
the
Speech Recognition (WSR) feature to enable the creation of
user-defined, voice-activated macros. The user specifies a key word or
phrase, then defines one or more actions to be taken when that word or
phrase is recognized. The most common types of actions to be taken
include key presses, mouse movement and clicks, and clipboard
manipulation. However, there are many other more advanced features
available that provide a lot of flexibility to users including
variables, loops, and conditionals. You can even have the computer
speak to you in response to your commands! VoiceAttack requires an
internet connection, but only during the registration process, after
which the network adapter can be disabled or configured to a network
that cannot reach the internet without issue.
To use VoiceAttack, you must first train Windows Speech Recognition
to recognize your voice. Instructions on how to do so can be found
This process only takes a few minutes at minimum, but the more time
you spend training, the better the experience you will have with it.
FLARE’s IDA Pro profile for VoiceAttack maps every advertised
keyboard shortcut in IDA Pro to a voice command. Although this is only
one part of what the profile provides, many users will find this in
itself very useful. When developing this profile, I was shocked to
discover just how many keyboard shortcuts there really are for IDA Pro
and what can be accomplished with them. Some of my favorite shortcuts
are found under the View->Open Subviews and Windows
menus. With this profile, I can simply say “show strings” or “show
structures” or “show window x” to change the tab I am currently
viewing or open a new view in a tab without having to move my mouse
cursor anywhere. The next few paragraphs describe some other useful
commands to make any reverse engineer’s job easier. For a more
detailed description of the profile and commands available, see the
A series of voice commands can perform multi-step actions not
otherwise reachable by individual keyboard shortcuts. For example,
wouldn’t it be nice to have commands to toggle the visibility of
opcode bytes (see Figure 1)? Currently, you have to open the
Options menu, select the General menu item, input a
value in the Number of opcode bytes text field, and click the
OK button. Well, now you can simply say “show opcodes” or “hide
opcodes” and it will be so!
Figure 1: Configuring the number of
opcode bytes to show in IDA Pro's disassembly view
Defining a Unicode string in IDA Pro is a multi-step exercise,
whether you navigate to the Edit->Strings menu or use the
“string literals” keyboard shortcut Alt+A followed by pressing
the U key as shown in Figure 2. Now you can simply say “make
Unicode string” and the work is done for you.
Figure 2: String literals dialog in IDA Pro
Reversing a C++ application? The Create struct from selection
action is a very helpful feature in this case, but it requires you to
navigate to the Edit->Structs menu in order to use it. The
voice command “create struct from selection” does this for you
automatically. The “look it up” command will copy the currently
highlighted token in the disassembly and search Google for it using
your default browser. There are several other macros in the profile
that are like this and save you a lot of time navigating menus and
dialogs to perform simple actions.
The cursor movement commands allow the user to move the cursor up,
down, left, or right, one or more times, in specified increments.
These commands also allow for scrolling with a voice command that
commences scrolling in a chosen direction, and another voice command
for stopping scrolling. There are even voice commands to set the speed
of the scroll to slow, medium, or fast. In the disassembly view, the
cursor can also be moved per “word” on the current line of the
disassembly or decompilation, or even per basic block or function.
Like many other applications, dialogs are a part of IDA Pro’s user
interface. The ability to easily navigate and interact with items in a
dialog with your voice is essential to a smooth user experience. Voice
commands in the profile enable the user to easily click the OK or
Cancel buttons, toggle checkboxes, and tab through controls in the
dialog in both directions and in specified increments.
With the aid of a companion
plugin, additional navigation commands are supported. Commands
that allow the user to move the cursor to the beginning or end of the
current function, to the next or previous “call” instruction, to the
previous or next instruction containing the highlighted token, or to a
specified number of bytes forward or backwards from the current cursor
position help to make voice-controlled navigation easier.
These cursor movement and navigation commands enable users to have
full control of IDA Pro without the use of their hands. While this is
true and an important goal for the profile, it is not practical for
people who have full use of their hands to go completely hands-free.
The commands that navigate the cursor in IDA Pro will never be as fast
or easy as simply using the mouse to point and click somewhere on the
screen. In any case, users will find themselves building up a
collection of voice commands they prefer to use that will depend on
personal tastes. However, enabling full voice control allows reverse
engineers who do not have full use of their hands to still effectively
operate IDA Pro, which we hope will be of great use to the community.
Having such a capability is also useful for those who suffer from
strain injury.
The commands described so far give you control over IDA Pro with
your voice, but there is still the matter of providing textual input
for items such as function and variable names, comments, and other
text input fields. VoiceAttack does provide the ability in macros to
enable and disable what is called “Dictation Mode”. When in Dictation
Mode, any recognized words are added to a buffer of text until
Dictation Mode is disabled. Then this text can be used elsewhere in
the macro. Unfortunately, this feature is not designed to recognize
the kinds of technical terms one would be using in the context of
reverse engineering programs. Even if it were, there is still the
issue of having to format the text to be a valid function or variable
name. Instead of wrestling with this feature to try to make it work
for this purpose, a very large and growing collection of “input
recognition” commands was created. These commands are designed to
recognize common words used in the names of functions and variables,
as well as full function names as found in the C runtime libraries and
the Windows APIs. Once recognized, the word or function name is copied
to the user’s clipboard and pasted into the text field. To avoid the
inadvertent triggering of such commands during the regular operation
of IDA Pro, these commands are only active when the “input mode” is
enabled. This mode is enabled automatically when certain commands are
activated such as “rename” or “find”, and automatically disabled when
dialog commands such as “OK” or “cancel” are activated. The input mode
can also be manually manipulated with the “input mode on” and “input
mode off” commands.
Today, the FLARE team is releasing a
for VoiceAttack and a companion IDAPython plugin that enables
full voice control of IDA Pro along with many added convenience
features. The profile contains over 1000 defined commands and growing.
It is easy to view, edit, and add commands to this profile to
customize it to suit your needs or to improve it for the community at
large. The VoiceAttack software is highly affordable and enables you
to create profiles for any applications or games that you use. For
installation instructions and usage information, see the project’s
page. Give it a try today!