Binwalk

Binwalk is a tool designed for analyzing, reverse engineering, and extracting firmware images. The tool enables users to examine embedded file systems and extract various types of archives and file formats commonly found in firmware. The tool supports automated extraction of embedded files and file systems from firmware images using multiple third-party extraction utilities. Binwalk can identify and extract various file types, compressed archives, and embedded file systems within firmware binaries. Security considerations include potential directory traversal vulnerabilities in versions prior to v2.3.3, where extracted archives could create symlinks pointing to arbitrary file system locations. Version 2.3.3 and later addresses these concerns by allowing external extraction tools to run as unprivileged users and requiring explicit root permissions for extraction operations. The tool requires Python 3 and integrates with various external extraction utilities to handle different file formats and compression schemes found in firmware images.