What is IDA Teams?
IDA Teams is the evolution of IDA into a new model that lets teams of analysts work together, using a robust client-server architecture paradigm:
We call the server at the center the Vault Server, and is the storage area, which holds all the files and tracks modifications. This server is the central point for sharing progress across projects.
Every time a contributor publishes his·her changes to the rest of the team through the server, the change remembered. It then becomes possible have teams of people working together on the same project, without a risk of losing data, multiple competing "out-of-sync" versions, etc...
In addition to the new Vault Server, we have improved IDA so it can serve as a tool to perform comparisons between different refinements (i.e., "revisions"), of the same .idb file. With this new functionality, anyone can see what changes were introduced at each revision:
How does it work?
The general workflow of IDA remains unchanged: users can work within IDA (online, or offline) just like they
did before.
But thanks to the IDA Teams' architecture, they now have better tools to publish their discoveries to the
rest of the team (and to retrieve and benefit from the changes made by other members.)
Let's imagine a small team consisting of two analysts, Alice and Bob, working on the same project:
We offer you the posibility to try a full-featured demo.
New tools
In addition to the Vault Server (and improvements to IDA itself), IDA Teams comes with brand new tools allowing users to interact with the server in an easy way: hvui
IDA Teams is Hex-Rays's answer to a growing need for collaboration in reverse-engineering teams. Here are a few key benefits:
Seamless integration
IDA Teams is an improved version of to IDA Pro, and only adds features to it. For the most part, existing workflows will remain untouched.
Easy collaboration
The improvements made to IDA, as well as the set of new tools, are priceless additions for dealing with large projects.
Parallelize reverse-engineering
IDA Teams allows you to seamlessly share the task of reverse-engineering across multiple users (potentially working simultaneously).
Keep track of changes
Discuss, review or even correct previous changes. The Vault Server keeps a ledger of who did what (and when), shedding some light onto an otherwise sometimes confusing context.
On-premises
Organizations retain all of their IP by hosting the IDA Teams themselves. In addition, it will integrate seamlessly within existing IT infrastructures (and backup strategies.) Vault Servers can be hosted on any Linux server, leaving you with a wide range of options to keep your data private and reliably accessible.
Online, or offline
The IDA Teams server being hosted on the premises, doesn't mean that users must be physically present to work: it's perfectly possible to do all the work while away and without an internet connection (e.g., on a plane), and make it available as soon as access to the server is back.
Easy conflict resolutions
When two (or more) analysts modify the same part of a project, conflicts can arise. There as well, IDA Teams has you covered: the new features bring a set of strategies to resolve those.
Future plans
Future releases will see the collaboration-oriented features list grow, with the addition of (among other things):
Introduction of bundles
The products catalog for IDA Teams has been simplified, this is why IDA Teams will be exclusively avalaible in 4 bundles: Standalone, Base, Core & Ultra.
Price TBA
x86 & x64 decompilers
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x86, x64, ARM & ARM64 decompilers
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x86, x64, ARM, ARM64, PPC, PPC64, MIPS & MIPS64 decompilers
Price TBA