Honestly, I thought that by the time 2016 hits VB would be collecting dust in the computer programming archives. Apparently, I am wrong and VB Decompiler says it all.
There seems to be a lot of Visual Basic code in the wild and a lot more is still being coded and compiled. The problem here is when this legacy or current code is not available and something must be looked at within the guts of the program.
The source code could be lost or the original developers may have closed shop altogether. So how would you access the software’s internals?
Introducing VB Decompiler
VB Decompiler from DOTFIX Software is a source code recovery tool for Visual Basic 6 and 5 applications. This reversing tool is also a disassembler for Visual Studio .NET applications.
Reversing VB applications is done by working on the pseudo code which restores the source code as close as possible to the original and maybe a couple of bugs which can be finished off by hand.
In more situations than not programs are normally compiled into machine language rather than the interpreted pseudocode. In this case, it is virtually impossible to get the original source code from the program and therefore other techniques are required.
VB Decompiler is capable of disassembling the program into assembly code which is ideal for reverse engineering and software analysis notwithstanding the fact that compiled programs vary based on optimizations, packing and other protection techniques.
The .NET code can be disassembled on any 32 bit Windows system even though the .NET framework is not available and no other dependencies are required.
Plugin Support
VB Decompiler comes with plugin support many of which are available for download from the official website as well as third-party sources. Plugins include a version checker, an FRX Viewer, a reference analysis plugin, a decompiler priority setter and a map creator plugin among others.
This reverse engineering tool can be purchased on the official website here. Another option to get familiar with this tool is to go ahead and download the VB Decompiler Lite version which is available for free.
Ref: https://www.vb-decompiler.org/documentation.htm
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