zerdei's luyten, a worthwhile jd-gui alternative

if you use dex2jar + jd-gui and you find the results less than satisfying, that's normal. jd-gui hasn't been updated in at least 100 years. methods often fail to compile and blocks of code are sometimes omitted.

luyten, by deathmarine, which you can get here: https://github.com/deathmarine/Luyten/releases is a front end for procyon, a java decompiler. procyon+luyten has a higher success rate for decompiling methods in my experience, and has higher fidelity output, though it's more verbose. the UI isn't that great, but this pull request by zerdei includes several noteworthy improvements: https://github.com/deathmarine/Luyten/pull/13

feel free to clone and build the jar yourself, but if you're lazy, and somewhat trusting, i built this for you!
https://mega.co.nz/#!K95RlRiB!ak2DWRxC2DgPYDic0eDpQibAuGtIoFZGtU67GzyjEjM

hexicle utility

Hex has released a tool called hexicle which wraps a lot of common tools such as smali, baksmali, zipalign, etc. with a friendly ui. it's written in python and is made for linux. here's a bit from the readme, which you should totally read:

The tool is written in python using curses library. The tool comes inclusive of all tools that are necessary for it's fuctionality. Hexicle will always overwrite files. The sources are decompiled in a folder with a same name.

download v1.1: http://www.mediafire.com/download/8o9m2dr7pky2mnf/Hexicle+v1.1.zip
password: hexicle


 if you have any bugs or comments, Hex requested that you just post them here.

smali syntax highlighting for sublime

i have been using sublime text 2 + androguard plugin for decompiling and am liking it very much. it doesn't do as well producing correct java as, say, dex2jar + jdgui, but it's sometimes easier to read. it doesn't handle try/catch blocks at all -- just ignores them. this means it's a great alternative for jdgui, which will error out on methods with overlapping try/catch stuff.

since i've been using sublime, i've also needed a smali syntax highlighter, which i found here: https://github.com/ShaneWilton/sublime-smali

it's the best syntax highlighter i've seen because of the line level syntax validation it does. when you write smali, you can be more confident it is correct with this. you should check out the regex if you're a fan of such tedium.

android reverse tools - ART

here's a cool tool i was shown the other day. it's an easy-mode gui for all your decompiling and recompiling needs. ordinarily this would be rather unimpressive. it's not too hard to write a little wrapper for some java commands, but he/she really put some polish on this.

not only does it come with everything you need, including java and bits of the android sdk, but it even has a slick manual and a complete walk-through for my lesson0.crackme0.

here's a screen shot of the app:

 

here's the link to download (24mb): http://ul.to/or3kme6t
virus scan: https://www.virustotal.com/file/f6ac4279161b666811d80736a7a23790709c5b3ccb36a8f83dd138d9601eb480/analysis/1334082130/

as a first exercise, i recommend that you update the apktool included with the pack. it may have gone out of date. you can update the other components if you're so inclined but it might not help much.

if you have any trouble decompiling or compiling, remember it's using apktool under the hood so trouble shoot apktool first.

and if you want some more crackmes to try, here's deurus' profile on crackmes.de: http://crackmes.de/users/deurus