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I get asked all the time how to get started in binary RE. There are tons of great resources out there, so #1 is just get started with something, anything! But if you're open to suggestions for building a strong, general reverse engineering foundation, here are my suggestions:
1. If you've never taken a computer architecture course or need a refresher: NAND2Tetris. It's free! coursera.org/learn/build-a-… Seriously. It will give you a great understanding of the relationship between Software, Hardware, and the assembly we RE, and it's fun!
2. Learn C. Anyway that sounds good to you is the right way. Why? Pointers & memory are hard. It's even harder to learn them in ASM. Play with C & understand bit operations & how arrays work so they'll be known patterns when you look at them in asm.
3. Start disassembling your C programs & analyzing the assembly. Write programs for things you want to be able to RE. objdump is free. You don't need anything fancy. Ask friends to write C programs for you and give you the binary.
4. Now, you have the foundations to start applying binary RE to whatever problem you want to solve: Windows malware, driver modification, IOT analysis, bug hunting, etc. And there are lots of great focused resources out there are on whatever topic you want.
5. And once you've learned one asm architecture, it's generally not that difficult to learn the syntax and quirks of another. Just try it out and see how it goes. Because all of us who are comfortable doing RE, only got that way by doing it...a lot.
