Last week, the North American team (+ Igor) attended REcon 2025, and it did not disappoint!

Some highlights, in no particular order:
➥ Watching our own Peter Goodman share past research on a panel alongside esteemed peers
➥ Connecting with IDA power users to hear the good, the bad, and the feature requests (We left with 20+ pages of notes for the Product team!)
➥ Partnering with Blackhoodie to help bring their training attendees to the main conference for continued learning (Thank you, Google Montreal, for hosting!)
➥ Closing out day 1 with some Nerdcore hip hop and great company

Big thanks to @hugofortier, Anne, and everyone else who made this event happen.

Power users are taking IDA headless with idalib.
Think large-scale diffing, custom UIs, and CI pipelines... all without launching a GUI.

💡 Get inspired: https://hex-rays.com/blog/4-powerful-applications-of-idalib-headless-ida-in-action

👉🏽 Check out this in-depth video of @nmatt0 reversing the firmware decryption mechanism used in a Hanwha security camera with IDA Pro. Bonus: He's also written an accompanying blog post packed with code samples, screenshots, and more!

https://hex-rays.com/blog/reversing-hanwha-security-cameras-a-deep-dive-by-matt-brown

Analysts & Reversers, your lab just got smarter.

IDA Free 9.1 is now preinstalled in FLARE VM, Mandiant's open-source malware analysis environment.

➥ Lightweight static analysis with cloud decompilers
➥ One-click to launch IDA directly
➥ IDA Plugin ecosystem ready to go

Read more about the integration here: https://hex-rays.com/blog/ida-free-9.1-now-preinstalled-in-flare-vm

We're headed to REcon Montreal later this month!
Give us a 👍 if you're going too.

Here’s where you can find us:
➥ Wed–Thurs: Supporting the next generation at Blackhoodie Training
➥ Friday: Join us for the "Beyond Decompilation" panel at 5pm
➥ All weekend: Spot us around, share your feedback & snag some swag!

We’re not at a booth, so keep an eye out for folks in Hex-Rays attire. 👀
OR, you can skip the hunt and schedule time with us here: https://eu1.hubs.ly/H0k_rjY0

🛠️ Real-world RE with IDA

In this video, Billy Ellis uses patch diffing to investigate a CoreAudio vulnerability recently fixed in iOS 18.4.1—believed to have been exploited in the wild.

Follow along as they uncover key changes in the binary, trace the source of memory corruption, and share insights into their ongoing analysis.

🎥 Watch now: https://lnkd.in/g4yCQYYu

📢 New Hex-Rays Plugin Repository!

We’ve upgraded our plugin repo to simplify how you submit and manage your plugins.
➥ Check it out: https://plugins.hex-rays.com/

◉ The new submission process now goes through your http://my.hex-rays.com account.
◉ We now support GitHub-based submissions as well - woot!
◉ If you've submitted a plugin in the past, don't worry, we've ported it over to the new repository. All you have to do now is connect your account with your plugin. It's a simple process.

➥ To learn more about the benefits of reconnecting to your plugin, read this blog: https://hex-rays.com/blog/why-you-should-claim-ownership-of-your-plugin
➥ To jump straight to submitting a new plugin or reconnecting your plugin, read this guide: https://docs.hex-rays.com/user-guide/plugins/plugin-submission-guide

👋 Please join us in welcoming @rolfrolles as Hex-Rays’ new Chief Scientist!

Rolf brings decades of RE expertise, with standout work in obfuscation, decompilation, and software protection. At Hex-Rays, he’ll lead research into next-gen decompilation and automated program understanding to keep our tools at the cutting edge.

We’re thrilled to have him on board!

♦️ Thank you @offensivecon for several days of great content and connection!
♦️ Congrats @rolfrolles on a successful training, your attendees walked away with so much knowledge.
♦️ And HUGE thanks to everyone who took the time to have feedback sessions with us about #IDA - these are invaluable. Truly.

▶▶ We were honored to partner with @blackhoodie to bring a free training to women, by women—nothing but positive feedback about the training and gratitude for all involved. We were lucky to spend time with a handful of the attendees to learn more about them, their journey to reversing, and what the future holds. Such inspiring stories.

▶▶ If you missed us, it's not too late to give feedback about the product, our (email) door is always open: product@hex-rays.com 👈

We're looking forward to @offensive_con this week! We're proud to be partnering with @blackhoodie to bring a 1-day free training for women, by women.

If you're there, we'd love to meet up! Catch us in the hallway for a casual chat, or book something more formal via the link below.

Either way, we want to hear from you - tell us everything you love about IDA, and all the things you don't, and new features you'd like to have.

Book a meeting: https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/justine-benjamin/offensivecon-2025