Deobfuscating Android ARM64 strings with Ghidra: Emulating, Patching, and Automating

This tutorial demonstrates step-by-step techniques to recover XOR-encrypted strings from an Android ARM64 binary using Ghidra’s emulator, including working around external libc calls with SLEIGH injections, patching exclusive monitor instructions for single-threaded emulation, and scripting automated decryption and labeling in Ghidra. It provides practical guidance to trace function calls, adjust registers/memory, and convert discovered data into readable C strings, culminating in a Python-based workflow to identify calls, extract parameters, decrypt strings, and update program metadata.