[JMI]

Actually, learning assembly language is a fairly essential skill because it is what is displayed in the debugger for most programming languages. Yes, I know that there are exceptions, but the majority of what one sees when using the standard debuggers is assembly language.

That said, it is not necessary that one actually learns how to "program" in assembly language, although it is certainly an advantage. However, what one needs to know is at least how to recognize assembly language code and have some basic understanding of what the code is telling you it is doing. You may not recognize that the assembly is setting up some procedure using or not using some API or another, but you better well recognize what the operand instructions are telling you is happening with the code.

By this, I simply mean you need to recognize and understand the use of registers to store information and pointers and many other things of interest to the reverser. If one does not understand what the various instructions actually do to whatever they are manipulating, one has little chance of figuring out what to look for and/or how it might be changed to make the desired result happen. This means it is fairly essential that one have a working understanding of the mnemonics displayed in SICE and/or OllyDbg and/or WinDBG., or whatever.

Without the understanding, one can not expect to even recognize what the debugger displays, let alone where, or how to change it, beyond following, by rote, someone elses tutorial, step by step. That is not actually learning anything, other than how to follow a receipt, such as from a cook book. One is not really learning how to cook, one is only learning how to follow what the cook said to do to make that particular thing the exact same way he/she said to make it.

There are many sources available on the net to acquire such basic knowledge "of" assembly language, aside from the acquiring of the knowledge of how to actually "program" in that language.

Works such as:

Iczelion's Win32 Assembly Tutorial Series; The Art of Assembly Language Programming; Assembly for Crackers; Assembly Language Reference by Dr. ME!; The cRACKER's n0TES

are but a few of those readly available sources for acquiring some basic knowledge and but a small part of the reference files I maintain on my computer archive. There are many more, as any simple search using "assembly language + tutorial" will find.

There is really very little substitue in Reverse Engineering for actually starting "at the beginning" and learning the basics of what the code is telling you when you look at it in the debugger. That is the primary tool and the primary method used to do this work and failure to spend the time necessary to acquire a basic understanding of these issues is a substantial impediment to further skill development.

Regards,