Reverse Engineering for Beginners
Dennis Yurichev
Reverse Engineering for Beginners
Dennis Yurichev
<dennis(a)yurichev.com>
c b n d
©2013-2015, Dennis Yurichev.
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July 16, 2015
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ABRIDGED CONTENTS ABRIDGED CONTENTS
Abridged contents
I Code patterns 1
II Important fundamentals 663
III Slightly more advanced examples 675
IV Java 904
V Finding important/interesting stuff in the code 962
VI OS-specific 999
VII Tools 1084
VIII Examples of real-world RE 3
tasks 1091
IX Examples of reversing proprietary file formats 1266
X Other things 1303
XI Books/blogs worth reading 1331
XII Exercises 1335
Afterword 1388
Appendix 1390
Acronyms used 1451
iv
CONTENTS CONTENTS
Contents
0.0.1 Donate . . . xxxi
I Code patterns 1
1 A short introduction to the CPU 4 1.1 A couple of words about different ISA4s . . . 52 The simplest Function 6 2.1 x86 . . . 6
2.2 ARM . . . 7
2.3 MIPS . . . 7
2.3.1 A note about MIPS instruction/register names . . . 8
3 Hello, world! 9 3.1 x86 . . . 9
3.1.1 MSVC . . . 9
3.1.2 GCC . . . 11
3.1.3 GCC: AT&T syntax . . . 13
3.2 x86-64 . . . 15
3.2.1 MSVC—x86-64 . . . 15
3.2.2 GCC—x86-64 . . . 16
3.3 GCC—one more thing . . . 17
3.4 ARM . . . 18
3.4.1 Non-optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 18
3.4.2 Non-optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 21
3.4.3 Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (ARM mode) . . . 22
3.4.4 Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (Thumb-2 mode) . . . 23
3.4.5 ARM64 . . . 26
3.5 MIPS . . . 28
3.5.1 A word about “global pointer”. . . 28
4Instruction Set Architecture
CONTENTS CONTENTS
3.5.2 Optimizing GCC. . . 28
3.5.3 Non-optimizing GCC. . . 31
3.5.4 Role of the stack frame in this example. . . 33
3.5.5 Optimizing GCC: load it into GDB. . . 34
3.6 Conclusion. . . 35
3.7 Exercises . . . 35
3.7.1 Exercise #1 . . . 35
3.7.2 Exercise #2 . . . 35
4 Function prologue and epilogue 37 4.1 Recursion . . . 37
5 Stack 39 5.1 Why does the stack grow backwards?. . . 40
5.2 What is the stack used for? . . . 41
5.2.1 Save the function’s return address. . . 41
5.2.2 Passing function arguments . . . 43
5.2.3 Local variable storage. . . 44
5.2.4 x86: alloca() function . . . 44
5.2.5 (Windows) SEH . . . 47
5.2.6 Buffer overflow protection . . . 47
5.2.7 Automatic deallocation of data in stack . . . 47
5.3 Typical stack layout . . . 48
5.4 Noise in stack . . . 48
5.5 Exercises . . . 52
5.5.1 Exercise #1 . . . 52
5.5.2 Exercise #2 . . . 53
6 printf()with several arguments 56 6.1 x86 . . . 56
6.1.1 x86: 3 arguments . . . 56
6.1.2 x64: 8 arguments . . . 67
6.2 ARM . . . 72
6.2.1 ARM: 3 arguments . . . 72
6.2.2 ARM: 8 arguments . . . 75
6.3 MIPS . . . 81
6.3.1 3 arguments. . . 81
6.3.2 8 arguments. . . 85
6.4 Conclusion. . . 90
6.5 By the way. . . 92
7 scanf() 93 7.1 Simple example . . . 93
7.1.1 About pointers . . . 93
CONTENTS CONTENTS
7.1.2 x86 . . . 94
7.1.3 MSVC + OllyDbg . . . 97
7.1.4 x64 . . . 100
7.1.5 ARM . . . 101
7.1.6 MIPS. . . 103
7.2 Global variables . . . 106
7.2.1 MSVC: x86 . . . 106
7.2.2 MSVC: x86 + OllyDbg . . . 109
7.2.3 GCC: x86 . . . 110
7.2.4 MSVC: x64 . . . 110
7.2.5 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 111
7.2.6 ARM64 . . . 113
7.2.7 MIPS. . . 114
7.3 scanf() result checking . . . 119
7.3.1 MSVC: x86 . . . 120
7.3.2 MSVC: x86: IDA . . . 121
7.3.3 MSVC: x86 + OllyDbg . . . 126
7.3.4 MSVC: x86 + Hiew . . . 128
7.3.5 MSVC: x64 . . . 129
7.3.6 ARM . . . 130
7.3.7 MIPS. . . 133
7.3.8 Exercise. . . 134
7.4 Exercises. . . 134
7.4.1 Exercise #1 . . . 134
8 Accessing passed arguments 135 8.1 x86 . . . 135
8.1.1 MSVC . . . 135
8.1.2 MSVC + OllyDbg . . . 137
8.1.3 GCC . . . 137
8.2 x64 . . . 138
8.2.1 MSVC . . . 139
8.2.2 GCC . . . 140
8.2.3 GCC: uint64_t instead of int . . . 142
8.3 ARM . . . 143
8.3.1 Non-optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 143
8.3.2 Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 144
8.3.3 Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 144
8.3.4 ARM64 . . . 145
8.4 MIPS . . . 147
9 More about results returning 150 9.1 Attempt to use the result of a function returningvoid . . . 150
9.2 What if we do not use the function result? . . . 152
CONTENTS CONTENTS
9.3 Returning a structure . . . 152
10 Pointers 155 10.1 Global variables example . . . 155
10.2 Local variables example . . . 161
10.3 Conclusion. . . 165
11 GOTO operator 166 11.1 Dead code . . . 169
11.2 Exercise . . . 170
12 Conditional jumps 171 12.1 Simple example . . . 171
12.1.1 x86 . . . 172
12.1.2 ARM . . . 185
12.1.3 MIPS. . . 189
12.2 Calculating absolute value. . . 194
12.2.1 Optimizing MSVC. . . 194
12.2.2 Optimizing Keil 6/2013: Thumb mode . . . 195
12.2.3 Optimizing Keil 6/2013: ARM mode . . . 195
12.2.4 Non-optimizing GCC 4.9 (ARM64) . . . 196
12.2.5 MIPS. . . 196
12.2.6 Branchless version? . . . 197
12.3 Ternary conditional operator . . . 197
12.3.1 x86 . . . 197
12.3.2 ARM . . . 199
12.3.3 ARM64 . . . 200
12.3.4 MIPS. . . 200
12.3.5 Let’s rewrite it in anif/elseway . . . 201
12.3.6 Conclusion. . . 202
12.4 Getting minimal and maximal values . . . 202
12.4.1 32-bit . . . 202
12.4.2 64-bit . . . 205
12.4.3 MIPS. . . 208
12.5 Conclusion. . . 209
12.5.1 x86 . . . 209
12.5.2 ARM . . . 209
12.5.3 MIPS. . . 209
12.5.4 Branchless . . . 210
12.6 Exercise . . . 211
13 switch()/case/default 212 13.1 Small number of cases . . . 212
13.1.1 x86 . . . 212
CONTENTS CONTENTS
13.1.2 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode). . . 223
13.1.3 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 224
13.1.4 ARM64: Non-optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 225
13.1.5 ARM64: Optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 226
13.1.6 MIPS. . . 226
13.1.7 Conclusion. . . 228
13.2 A lot of cases . . . 228
13.2.1 x86 . . . 229
13.2.2 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode). . . 235
13.2.3 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 238
13.2.4 MIPS. . . 240
13.2.5 Conclusion. . . 242
13.3 When there are severalcasestatements in one block . . . 244
13.3.1 MSVC . . . 245
13.3.2 GCC . . . 246
13.3.3 ARM64: Optimizing GCC 4.9.1. . . 247
13.4 Fall-through. . . 249
13.4.1 MSVC x86 . . . 250
13.4.2 ARM64 . . . 251
13.5 Exercises . . . 252
13.5.1 Exercise #1 . . . 252
14 Loops 253 14.1 Simple example . . . 253
14.1.1 x86 . . . 253
14.1.2 x86: OllyDbg . . . 259
14.1.3 x86: tracer . . . 260
14.1.4 ARM . . . 263
14.1.5 MIPS. . . 266
14.1.6 One more thing. . . 268
14.2 Memory blocks copying routine . . . 268
14.2.1 Straight-forward implementation . . . 269
14.2.2 ARM in ARM mode . . . 270
14.2.3 MIPS. . . 271
14.2.4 Vectorization . . . 272
14.3 Conclusion. . . 272
14.4 Exercises . . . 274
14.4.1 Exercise #1 . . . 274
14.4.2 Exercise #2 . . . 274
14.4.3 Exercise #3 . . . 275
14.4.4 Exercise #4 . . . 277
15 Simple C-strings processing 281 15.1 strlen() . . . 281
CONTENTS CONTENTS
15.1.1 x86 . . . 282
15.1.2 ARM . . . 290
15.1.3 MIPS. . . 295
15.2 Exercises . . . 296
15.2.1 Exercise #1 . . . 296
16 Replacing arithmetic instructions to other ones 300 16.1 Multiplication. . . 300
16.1.1 Multiplication using addition . . . 300
16.1.2 Multiplication using shifting. . . 301
16.1.3 Multiplication using shifting, subtracting, and adding . . . . 302
16.2 Division . . . 307
16.2.1 Division using shifts . . . 307
16.3 Exercises . . . 308
16.3.1 Exercise #2 . . . 308
17 Floating-point unit 310 17.1 IEEE 754 . . . 310
17.2 x86 . . . 310
17.3 ARM, MIPS, x86/x64 SIMD . . . 311
17.4 C/C++ . . . 311
17.5 Simple example . . . 311
17.5.1 x86 . . . 312
17.5.2 ARM: Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (ARM mode) . . . 320
17.5.3 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 321
17.5.4 ARM64: Optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 322
17.5.5 ARM64: Non-optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 322
17.5.6 MIPS. . . 324
17.6 Passing floating point numbers via arguments . . . 325
17.6.1 x86 . . . 325
17.6.2 ARM + Non-optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (Thumb-2 mode) 326 17.6.3 ARM + Non-optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 327
17.6.4 ARM64 + Optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 328
17.6.5 MIPS. . . 329
17.7 Comparison example . . . 330
17.7.1 x86 . . . 331
17.7.2 ARM . . . 363
17.7.3 ARM64 . . . 367
17.7.4 MIPS. . . 369
17.8 Stack, calculators and reverse Polish notation . . . 370
17.9 x64 . . . 370
17.10Exercises . . . 370
17.10.1 Exercise #1 . . . 370
17.10.2 Exercise #2 . . . 371
CONTENTS CONTENTS
18 Arrays 373
18.1 Simple example . . . 373
18.1.1 x86 . . . 374
18.1.2 ARM . . . 378
18.1.3 MIPS. . . 382
18.2 Buffer overflow . . . 384
18.2.1 Reading outside array bounds. . . 384
18.2.2 Writing beyond array bounds . . . 387
18.3 Buffer overflow protection methods . . . 392
18.3.1 Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (Thumb-2 mode) . . . 396
18.4 One more word about arrays . . . 398
18.5 Array of pointers to strings . . . 399
18.5.1 x64 . . . 399
18.5.2 32-bit ARM. . . 401
18.5.3 ARM64 . . . 403
18.5.4 MIPS. . . 404
18.5.5 Array overflow . . . 405
18.6 Multidimensional arrays . . . 408
18.6.1 Two-dimensional array example . . . 410
18.6.2 Access two-dimensional array as one-dimensional . . . 411
18.6.3 Three-dimensional array example . . . 414
18.6.4 More examples . . . 419
18.7 Pack of strings as a two-dimensional array . . . 419
18.7.1 32-bit ARM. . . 422
18.7.2 ARM64 . . . 422
18.7.3 MIPS. . . 423
18.7.4 Conclusion. . . 424
18.8 Conclusion. . . 424
18.9 Exercises . . . 424
18.9.1 Exercise #1 . . . 424
18.9.2 Exercise #2 . . . 429
18.9.3 Exercise #3 . . . 435
18.9.4 Exercise #4 . . . 436
18.9.5 Exercise #5 . . . 438
19 Manipulating specific bit(s) 444 19.1 Specific bit checking . . . 444
19.1.1 x86 . . . 444
19.1.2 ARM . . . 448
19.2 Setting and clearing specific bits. . . 450
19.2.1 x86 . . . 451
19.2.2 ARM + Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 457
19.2.3 ARM + Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 458
19.2.4 ARM + Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (ARM mode) . . . 458
CONTENTS CONTENTS
19.2.5 ARM: more about theBICinstruction. . . 459
19.2.6 ARM64: Optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 459
19.2.7 ARM64: Non-optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 459
19.2.8 MIPS. . . 460
19.3 Shifts . . . 460
19.4 Setting and clearing specific bits: FPU5example. . . 461
19.4.1 A word about theXORoperation . . . 462
19.4.2 x86 . . . 462
19.4.3 MIPS. . . 464
19.4.4 ARM . . . 465
19.5 Counting bits set to 1 . . . 468
19.5.1 x86 . . . 470
19.5.2 x64 . . . 478
19.5.3 ARM + Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (ARM mode) . . . 482
19.5.4 ARM + Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (Thumb-2 mode) . . . 483
19.5.5 ARM64 + Optimizing GCC 4.9 . . . 483
19.5.6 ARM64 + Non-optimizing GCC 4.9 . . . 484
19.5.7 MIPS. . . 485
19.6 Conclusion. . . 487
19.6.1 Check for specific bit (known at compile stage) . . . 488
19.6.2 Check for specific bit (specified at runtime) . . . 488
19.6.3 Set specific bit (known at compile stage) . . . 489
19.6.4 Set specific bit (specified at runtime) . . . 489
19.6.5 Clear specific bit (known at compile stage) . . . 490
19.6.6 Clear specific bit (specified at runtime). . . 490
19.7 Exercises . . . 491
19.7.1 Exercise #1 . . . 491
19.7.2 Exercise #2 . . . 492
19.7.3 Exercise #3 . . . 496
19.7.4 Exercise #4 . . . 497
20 Linear congruential generator 500 20.1 x86 . . . 501
20.2 x64 . . . 502
20.3 32-bit ARM . . . 503
20.4 MIPS . . . 504
20.4.1 MIPS relocations . . . 506
20.5 Thread-safe version of the example . . . 507
21 Structures 508 21.1 MSVC: SYSTEMTIME example . . . 508
21.1.1 OllyDbg. . . 511
5Floating-point unit
CONTENTS CONTENTS
21.1.2 Replacing the structure with array . . . 512
21.2 Let’s allocate space for a structure using malloc() . . . 514
21.3 UNIX: struct tm . . . 516
21.3.1 Linux . . . 516
21.3.2 ARM . . . 520
21.3.3 MIPS. . . 523
21.3.4 Structure as a set of values . . . 525
21.3.5 Structure as an array of 32-bit words . . . 527
21.3.6 Structure as an array of bytes . . . 529
21.4 Fields packing in structure. . . 531
21.4.1 x86 . . . 532
21.4.2 ARM . . . 538
21.4.3 MIPS. . . 540
21.4.4 One more word . . . 541
21.5 Nested structures . . . 541
21.5.1 OllyDbg. . . 544
21.6 Bit fields in a structure . . . 544
21.6.1 CPUID example . . . 544
21.6.2 Working with the float type as with a structure . . . 551
21.7 Exercises . . . 555
21.7.1 Exercise #1 . . . 555
21.7.2 Exercise #2 . . . 555
22 Unions 563 22.1 Pseudo-random number generator example. . . 563
22.1.1 x86 . . . 565
22.1.2 MIPS. . . 566
22.1.3 ARM (ARM mode). . . 568
22.2 Calculating machine epsilon . . . 570
22.2.1 x86 . . . 571
22.2.2 ARM64 . . . 572
22.2.3 MIPS. . . 572
22.2.4 Conclusion. . . 573
22.3 Fast square root calculation. . . 573
23 Pointers to functions 575 23.1 MSVC . . . 576
23.1.1 MSVC + OllyDbg . . . 580
23.1.2 MSVC + tracer . . . 582
23.1.3 MSVC + tracer (code coverage) . . . 584
23.2 GCC . . . 584
23.2.1 GCC + GDB (with source code). . . 586
23.2.2 GCC + GDB (no source code) . . . 587
CONTENTS CONTENTS
24 64-bit values in 32-bit environment 591
24.1 Returning of 64-bit value . . . 591
24.1.1 x86 . . . 591
24.1.2 ARM . . . 592
24.1.3 MIPS. . . 592
24.2 Arguments passing, addition, subtraction . . . 593
24.2.1 x86 . . . 593
24.2.2 ARM . . . 595
24.2.3 MIPS. . . 596
24.3 Multiplication, division . . . 598
24.3.1 x86 . . . 598
24.3.2 ARM . . . 600
24.3.3 MIPS. . . 602
24.4 Shifting right . . . 603
24.4.1 x86 . . . 603
24.4.2 ARM . . . 604
24.4.3 MIPS. . . 604
24.5 Converting 32-bit value into 64-bit one . . . 605
24.5.1 x86 . . . 605
24.5.2 ARM . . . 605
24.5.3 MIPS. . . 606
25 SIMD 607 25.1 Vectorization . . . 608
25.1.1 Addition example . . . 609
25.1.2 Memory copy example . . . 616
25.2 SIMDstrlen()implementation . . . 622
26 64 bits 628 26.1 x86-64 . . . 628
26.2 ARM . . . 638
26.3 Float point numbers. . . 638
27 Working with floating point numbers using SIMD 639 27.1 Simple example . . . 639
27.1.1 x64 . . . 640
27.1.2 x86 . . . 641
27.2 Passing floating point number via arguments. . . 648
27.3 Comparison example . . . 649
27.3.1 x64 . . . 650
27.3.2 x86 . . . 651
27.4 Calculating machine epsilon: x64 and SIMD . . . 652
27.5 Pseudo-random number generator example revisited. . . 652
27.6 Summary. . . 653
CONTENTS CONTENTS
28 ARM-specific details 655
28.1 Number sign (#) before number . . . 655
28.2 Addressing modes . . . 655
28.3 Loading a constant into a register . . . 656
28.3.1 32-bit ARM. . . 656
28.3.2 ARM64 . . . 657
28.4 Relocs in ARM64 . . . 658
29 MIPS-specific details 661 29.1 Loading constants into register . . . 661
29.2 Further reading about MIPS . . . 662
II Important fundamentals 663
30 Signed number representations 665 31 Endianness 667 31.1 Big-endian. . . 66731.2 Little-endian . . . 667
31.3 Example . . . 668
31.4 Bi-endian . . . 668
31.5 Converting data . . . 669
32 Memory 670 33 CPU 672 33.1 Branch predictors . . . 672
33.2 Data dependencies . . . 672
34 Hash functions 673 34.1 How one-way function works? . . . 673
III Slightly more advanced examples 675
35 Temperature converting 676 35.1 Integer values. . . 67635.1.1 Optimizing MSVC 2012 x86 . . . 677
35.1.2 Optimizing MSVC 2012 x64 . . . 679
35.2 Floating-point values . . . 679
36 Fibonacci numbers 684 36.1 Example #1 . . . 684
36.2 Example #2 . . . 688
CONTENTS CONTENTS
36.3 Summary. . . 693
37 CRC32 calculation example 694 38 Network address calculation example 700 38.1 calc_network_address() . . . 702
38.2 form_IP() . . . 703
38.3 print_as_IP() . . . 705
38.4 form_netmask() and set_bit() . . . 707
38.5 Summary. . . 708
39 Loops: several iterators 710 39.1 Three iterators . . . 710
39.2 Two iterators . . . 711
39.3 Intel C++ 2011 case . . . 714
40 Duff’s device 718 41 Division by 9 723 41.1 x86 . . . 723
41.2 ARM . . . 725
41.2.1 Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (ARM mode) . . . 725
41.2.2 Optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) (Thumb-2 mode) . . . 726
41.2.3 Non-optimizing Xcode 4.6.3 (LLVM) and Keil 6/2013 . . . 726
41.3 MIPS . . . 727
41.4 How it works . . . 727
41.4.1 More theory . . . 729
41.5 Getting the divisor. . . 729
41.5.1 Variant #1 . . . 729
41.5.2 Variant #2 . . . 731
41.6 Exercise #1 . . . 731
42 String to number conversion (atoi()) 733 42.1 Simple example . . . 733
42.1.1 Optimizing MSVC 2013 x64 . . . 734
42.1.2 Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 x64 . . . 735
42.1.3 Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 736
42.1.4 Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 736
42.1.5 Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 ARM64 . . . 737
42.2 A slightly advanced example . . . 738
42.2.1 Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 x64 . . . 739
42.2.2 Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) . . . 741
42.3 Exercise . . . 742
43 Inline functions 743
CONTENTS CONTENTS
43.1 Strings and memory functions . . . 744
43.1.1 strcmp(). . . 744
43.1.2 strlen() . . . 747
43.1.3 strcpy() . . . 748
43.1.4 memset() . . . 748
43.1.5 memcpy(). . . 750
43.1.6 memcmp() . . . 754
43.1.7 IDA script. . . 755
44 C99 restrict 756 45 Branchlessabs()function 760 45.1 Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 x64 . . . 760
45.2 Optimizing GCC 4.9 ARM64 . . . 761
46 Variadic functions 762 46.1 Computing arithmetic mean. . . 762
46.1.1 cdeclcalling conventions . . . 763
46.1.2 Register-based calling conventions . . . 764
46.2 vprintf()function case . . . 767
47 Strings trimming 770 47.1 x64: Optimizing MSVC 2013 . . . 771
47.2 x64: Non-optimizing GCC 4.9.1 . . . 773
47.3 x64: Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 . . . 775
47.4 ARM64: Non-optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 777
47.5 ARM64: Optimizing GCC (Linaro) 4.9 . . . 778
47.6 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode). . . 779
47.7 ARM: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (Thumb mode) . . . 780
47.8 MIPS . . . 781
48 toupper() function 784 48.1 x64 . . . 785
48.1.1 Two comparison operations . . . 785
48.1.2 One comparison operation. . . 786
48.2 ARM . . . 787
48.2.1 GCC for ARM64 . . . 788
48.3 Summary. . . 789
49 Incorrectly disassembled code 790 49.1 Disassembling from an incorrect start (x86) . . . 790
49.2 How does random noise looks disassembled? . . . 791
50 Obfuscation 798 50.1 Text strings . . . 798
CONTENTS CONTENTS
50.2 Executable code . . . 799
50.2.1 Inserting garbage . . . 799
50.2.2 Replacing instructions with bloated equivalents . . . 800
50.2.3 Always executed/never executed code . . . 800
50.2.4 Making a lot of mess . . . 800
50.2.5 Using indirect pointers . . . 801
50.3 Virtual machine / pseudo-code . . . 802
50.4 Other things to mention . . . 802
50.5 Exercises . . . 802
50.5.1 Exercise #1 . . . 802
51 C++ 803 51.1 Classes . . . 803
51.1.1 A simple example . . . 803
51.1.2 Class inheritance . . . 812
51.1.3 Encapsulation. . . 816
51.1.4 Multiple inheritance. . . 819
51.1.5 Virtual methods . . . 824
51.2 ostream . . . 828
51.3 References . . . 829
51.4 STL . . . 830
51.4.1 std::string. . . 830
51.4.2 std::list . . . 841
51.4.3 std::vector . . . 856
51.4.4 std::map and std::set. . . 866
52 Negative array indices 883 53 Windows 16-bit 887 53.1 Example#1 . . . 887
53.2 Example #2 . . . 888
53.3 Example #3 . . . 889
53.4 Example #4 . . . 891
53.5 Example #5 . . . 894
53.6 Example #6 . . . 899
53.6.1 Global variables . . . 901
IV Java 904
54 Java 905 54.1 Introduction . . . 90554.2 Returning a value . . . 906
54.3 Simple calculating functions . . . 912
CONTENTS CONTENTS
54.4 JVM6memory model . . . 915
54.5 Simple function calling. . . 916
54.6 Calling beep() . . . 919
54.7 Linear congruential PRNG7 . . . 919
54.8 Conditional jumps . . . 921
54.9 Passing arguments. . . 924
54.10Bitfields . . . 926
54.11Loops . . . 927
54.12switch() . . . 930
54.13Arrays . . . 932
54.13.1Simple example . . . 932
54.13.2Summing elements of array . . . 933
54.13.3main()function sole argument is array too . . . 934
54.13.4Pre-initialized array of strings. . . 935
54.13.5Variadic functions . . . 938
54.13.6Two-dimensional arrays. . . 941
54.13.7Three-dimensional arrays . . . 942
54.13.8Summary . . . 943
54.14Strings . . . 944
54.14.1First example . . . 944
54.14.2Second example . . . 945
54.15Exceptions . . . 947
54.16Classes . . . 952
54.17Simple patching . . . 954
54.17.1 First example . . . 954
54.17.2 Second example . . . 957
54.18Summary. . . 960
V Finding important/interesting stuff in the code 962
55 Identification of executable files 964 55.1 Microsoft Visual C++. . . 96455.1.1 Name mangling. . . 964
55.2 GCC . . . 965
55.2.1 Name mangling. . . 965
55.2.2 Cygwin . . . 965
55.2.3 MinGW . . . 965
55.3 Intel FORTRAN . . . 965
55.4 Watcom, OpenWatcom . . . 965
55.4.1 Name mangling. . . 965
6Java virtual machine
7Pseudorandom number generator
CONTENTS CONTENTS
55.5 Borland . . . 966
55.5.1 Delphi. . . 966
55.6 Other known DLLs . . . 969
56 Communication with the outer world (win32) 970 56.1 Often used functions in the Windows API . . . 971
56.2 tracer: Intercepting all functions in specific module. . . 972
57 Strings 974 57.1 Text strings . . . 974
57.1.1 C/C++ . . . 974
57.1.2 Borland Delphi . . . 975
57.1.3 Unicode. . . 975
57.1.4 Base64 . . . 979
57.2 Error/debug messages . . . 980
57.3 Suspicious magic strings . . . 980
58 Calls to assert() 982 59 Constants 984 59.1 Magic numbers . . . 985
59.1.1 DHCP . . . 986
59.2 Searching for constants. . . 986
60 Finding the right instructions 987 61 Suspicious code patterns 990 61.1 XOR instructions . . . 990
61.2 Hand-written assembly code . . . 990
62 Using magic numbers while tracing 993 63 Other things 995 63.1 General idea. . . 995
63.2 C++ . . . 995
63.3 Some binary file patterns . . . 995
63.4 Memory “snapshots” comparing . . . 996
63.4.1 Windows registry . . . 997
63.4.2 Blink-comparator . . . 997
VI OS-specific 999
64 Arguments passing methods (calling conventions) 1000 64.1 cdecl . . . 1000CONTENTS CONTENTS
64.2 stdcall . . . 1000 64.2.1 Functions with variable number of arguments . . . 1002 64.3 fastcall . . . 1002 64.3.1 GCC regparm . . . 1004 64.3.2 Watcom/OpenWatcom. . . 1004 64.4 thiscall . . . 1004 64.5 x86-64 . . . 1004 64.5.1 Windows x64 . . . 1004 64.5.2 Linux x64 . . . 1008 64.6 Return values offloatanddoubletype . . . 1009 64.7 Modifying arguments . . . 1009 64.8 Taking a pointer to function argument . . . 1010
65 Thread Local Storage 1013
65.1 Linear congruential generator revisited . . . 1014 65.1.1 Win32. . . 1014 65.1.2 Linux . . . 1020
66 System calls (syscall-s) 1021
66.1 Linux . . . 1022 66.2 Windows . . . 1022
67 Linux 1023
67.1 Position-independent code . . . 1023 67.1.1 Windows . . . 1027 67.2 LD_PRELOADhack in Linux . . . 1027
68 Windows NT 1031
68.1 CRT (win32) . . . 1031 68.2 Win32 PE. . . 1036 68.2.1 Terminology . . . 1037 68.2.2 Base address . . . 1037 68.2.3 Subsystem . . . 1038 68.2.4 OS version . . . 1038 68.2.5 Sections . . . 1039 68.2.6 Relocations (relocs) . . . 1040 68.2.7 Exports and imports. . . 1041 68.2.8 Resources . . . 1044 68.2.9 .NET . . . 1045 68.2.10TLS . . . 1045 68.2.11Tools. . . 1045 68.2.12Further reading . . . 1046 68.3 Windows SEH . . . 1046 68.3.1 Let’s forget about MSVC. . . 1046
CONTENTS CONTENTS
68.3.2 Now let’s get back to MSVC . . . 1054 68.3.3 Windows x64 . . . 1075 68.3.4 Read more about SEH . . . 1080 68.4 Windows NT: Critical section . . . 1081
VII Tools 1084
69 Disassembler 1085
69.1 IDA . . . 1085
70 Debugger 1086
70.1 OllyDbg . . . 1086 70.2 GDB . . . 1086 70.3 tracer . . . 1086
71 System calls tracing 1088
71.0.1 strace / dtruss. . . 1088
72 Decompilers 1089
73 Other tools 1090
VIII Examples of real-world RE tasks 1091
74 Task manager practical joke (Windows Vista) 1093 74.1 Using LEA to load values. . . 1097
75 Color Lines game practical joke 1098
76 Minesweeper (Windows XP) 1102
76.1 Exercises . . . 1109
77 Hand decompiling + Z3 SMT solver 1110
77.1 Hand decompiling . . . 1110 77.2 Now let’s use the Z3 SMT solver . . . 1115
78 Dongles 1122
78.1 Example #1: MacOS Classic and PowerPC . . . 1122 78.2 Example #2: SCO OpenServer. . . 1133 78.2.1 Decrypting error messages. . . 1145 78.3 Example #3: MS-DOS . . . 1149 79 “QR9”: Rubik’s cube inspired amateur crypto-algorithm 1157
CONTENTS CONTENTS
80 SAP 1201
80.1 About SAP client network traffic compression . . . 1201 80.2 SAP 6.0 password checking functions. . . 1218
81 Oracle RDBMS 1225
81.1 V$VERSIONtable in the Oracle RDBMS . . . 1225 81.2 X$KSMLRUtable in Oracle RDBMS . . . 1238 81.3 V$TIMERtable in Oracle RDBMS . . . 1240
82 Handwritten assembly code 1246
82.1 EICAR test file . . . 1246
83 Demos 1248
83.1 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10 . . . 1248 83.1.1 Trixter’s 42 byte version. . . 1249 83.1.2 My attempt to reduce Trixter’s version: 27 bytes. . . 1250 83.1.3 Taking random memory garbage as a source of randomness 1251 83.1.4 Conclusion. . . 1252 83.2 Mandelbrot set . . . 1253 83.2.1 Theory . . . 1254 83.2.2 Let’s get back to the demo . . . 1260 83.2.3 My “fixed” version . . . 1263
IX Examples of reversing proprietary file formats 1266
84 Primitive XOR-encryption 1267
84.1 Norton Guide: simplest possible 1-byte XOR encryption . . . 1268 84.1.1 Entropy . . . 1269 84.2 Simplest possible 4-byte XOR encryption . . . 1271 84.2.1 Exercise. . . 1274
85 Millenium game save file 1275
86 Oracle RDBMS: .SYM-files 1282
87 Oracle RDBMS: .MSB-files 1295
87.1 Summary. . . 1302
X Other things 1303
88 npad 1304
89 Executable files patching 1307
CONTENTS CONTENTS
89.1 Text strings . . . 1307 89.2 x86 code . . . 1307
90 Compiler intrinsic 1309
91 Compiler’s anomalies 1310
92 OpenMP 1312
92.1 MSVC . . . 1315 92.2 GCC . . . 1318
93 Itanium 1321
94 8086 memory model 1326
95 Basic blocks reordering 1328
95.1 Profile-guided optimization . . . 1328
XI Books/blogs worth reading 1331
96 Books 1332
96.1 Windows . . . 1332 96.2 C/C++ . . . 1332 96.3 x86 / x86-64 . . . 1332 96.4 ARM . . . 1332 96.5 Cryptography . . . 1332
97 Blogs 1333
97.1 Windows . . . 1333
98 Other 1334
XII Exercises 1335
99 Level 1 1338
99.1 Exercise 1.4 . . . 1338
100Level 2 1339
100.1Exercise 2.1 . . . 1339 100.1.1Optimizing MSVC 2010 x86 . . . 1339 100.1.2Optimizing MSVC 2012 x64 . . . 1340 100.2Exercise 2.4 . . . 1341 100.2.1Optimizing MSVC 2010 . . . 1341 100.2.2GCC 4.4.1 . . . 1342
CONTENTS CONTENTS
100.2.3Optimizing Keil (ARM mode). . . 1344 100.2.4Optimizing Keil (Thumb mode) . . . 1345 100.2.5Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1346 100.2.6Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (MIPS). . . 1347 100.3Exercise 2.6 . . . 1348 100.3.1Optimizing MSVC 2010 . . . 1348 100.3.2Optimizing Keil (ARM mode). . . 1349 100.3.3Optimizing Keil (Thumb mode) . . . 1350 100.3.4Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1351 100.3.5Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (MIPS). . . 1352 100.4Exercise 2.13 . . . 1353 100.4.1Optimizing MSVC 2012 . . . 1353 100.4.2Keil (ARM mode) . . . 1353 100.4.3Keil (Thumb mode). . . 1354 100.4.4Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1354 100.4.5Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (MIPS). . . 1355 100.5Exercise 2.14 . . . 1355 100.5.1MSVC 2012 . . . 1355 100.5.2Keil (ARM mode) . . . 1356 100.5.3GCC 4.6.3 for Raspberry Pi (ARM mode). . . 1357 100.5.4Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1358 100.5.5Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (MIPS). . . 1359 100.6Exercise 2.15 . . . 1362 100.6.1Optimizing MSVC 2012 x64 . . . 1362 100.6.2Optimizing GCC 4.4.6 x64 . . . 1366 100.6.3Optimizing GCC 4.8.1 x86 . . . 1367 100.6.4Keil (ARM mode): Cortex-R4F CPU as target . . . 1369 100.6.5Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1370 100.6.6Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (MIPS). . . 1371 100.7Exercise 2.16 . . . 1373 100.7.1 Optimizing MSVC 2012 x64 . . . 1373 100.7.2 Optimizing Keil (ARM mode). . . 1374 100.7.3 Optimizing Keil (Thumb mode) . . . 1374 100.7.4 Non-optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1375 100.7.5 Optimizing GCC 4.9.1 (ARM64) . . . 1376 100.7.6 Non-optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (MIPS). . . 1379 100.8Exercise 2.17 . . . 1381 100.9Exercise 2.18 . . . 1381 100.10Exercise 2.19 . . . 1382 100.11Exercise 2.20 . . . 1382
101Level 3 1383
101.1Exercise 3.2 . . . 1383 101.2Exercise 3.3 . . . 1383
CONTENTS CONTENTS
101.3Exercise 3.4 . . . 1384 101.4Exercise 3.5 . . . 1384 101.5Exercise 3.6 . . . 1384 101.6Exercise 3.8 . . . 1385
102crackme / keygenme 1386
Afterword 1388
103Questions? 1388
Appendix 1390
A x86 1390
A.1 Terminology . . . 1390 A.2 General purpose registers . . . 1390 A.2.1 RAX/EAX/AX/AL. . . 1391 A.2.2 RBX/EBX/BX/BL . . . 1391 A.2.3 RCX/ECX/CX/CL. . . 1391 A.2.4 RDX/EDX/DX/DL . . . 1392 A.2.5 RSI/ESI/SI/SIL. . . 1392 A.2.6 RDI/EDI/DI/DIL . . . 1392 A.2.7 R8/R8D/R8W/R8L . . . 1392 A.2.8 R9/R9D/R9W/R9L . . . 1393 A.2.9 R10/R10D/R10W/R10L . . . 1393 A.2.10 R11/R11D/R11W/R11L . . . 1393 A.2.11 R12/R12D/R12W/R12L . . . 1393 A.2.12 R13/R13D/R13W/R13L . . . 1393 A.2.13 R14/R14D/R14W/R14L . . . 1394 A.2.14 R15/R15D/R15W/R15L . . . 1394 A.2.15 RSP/ESP/SP/SPL . . . 1394 A.2.16 RBP/EBP/BP/BPL . . . 1394 A.2.17 RIP/EIP/IP . . . 1395 A.2.18 CS/DS/ES/SS/FS/GS . . . 1395 A.2.19 Flags register . . . 1395 A.3 FPU registers . . . 1396 A.3.1 Control Word . . . 1397 A.3.2 Status Word . . . 1397 A.3.3 Tag Word . . . 1398 A.4 SIMD registers . . . 1399 A.4.1 MMX registers. . . 1399 A.4.2 SSE and AVX registers. . . 1399
CONTENTS CONTENTS
A.5 Debugging registers. . . 1399 A.5.1 DR6 . . . 1400 A.5.2 DR7 . . . 1400 A.6 Instructions . . . 1401 A.6.1 Prefixes . . . 1401 A.6.2 Most frequently used instructions . . . 1402 A.6.3 Less frequently used instructions. . . 1409 A.6.4 FPU instructions . . . 1416 A.6.5 Instructions having printable ASCII opcode . . . 1418
B ARM 1420
B.1 Terminology . . . 1420 B.2 Versions . . . 1420 B.3 32-bit ARM (AArch32). . . 1421 B.3.1 General purpose registers . . . 1421 B.3.2 Current Program Status Register (CPSR) . . . 1421 B.3.3 VFP (floating point) and NEON registers . . . 1422 B.4 64-bit ARM (AArch64). . . 1422 B.4.1 General purpose registers . . . 1422 B.5 Instructions . . . 1423 B.5.1 Conditional codes table. . . 1424
C MIPS 1425
C.1 Registers . . . 1425 C.1.1 General purpose registers GPR8. . . 1425 C.1.2 Floating-point registers. . . 1426 C.2 Instructions . . . 1426 C.2.1 Jump instructions. . . 1426
D Some GCC library functions 1428
E Some MSVC library functions 1429
F Cheatsheets 1430
F.1 IDA . . . 1430 F.2 OllyDbg . . . 1431 F.3 MSVC . . . 1432 F.4 GCC . . . 1432 F.5 GDB . . . 1432
G Exercise solutions 1434
G.1 Per chapter . . . 1434 G.1.1 “Hello, world!” chapter . . . 1434
8General Purpose Registers
CONTENTS CONTENTS
G.1.2 “Stack” chapter . . . 1435 G.1.3 “scanf()” chapter . . . 1435 G.1.4 “switch()/case/default” chapter . . . 1436 G.1.5 Exercise #1 . . . 1436 G.1.6 “Loops” chapter . . . 1436 G.1.7 Exercise #3 . . . 1436 G.1.8 Exercise #4 . . . 1437 G.1.9 “Simple C-strings processing” chapter. . . 1437 G.1.10 “Replacing arithmetic instructions to other ones” chapter . . 1438 G.1.11 “Floating-point unit” chapter . . . 1438 G.1.12 “Arrays” chapter. . . 1438 G.1.13 “Manipulating specific bit(s)” chapter . . . 1440 G.1.14 “Structures” chapter . . . 1442 G.1.15 “Obfuscation” chapter . . . 1444 G.1.16 “Division by 9” chapter . . . 1444 G.2 Level 1 . . . 1444 G.2.1 Exercise 1.1 . . . 1444 G.2.2 Exercise 1.4 . . . 1444 G.3 Level 2 . . . 1444 G.3.1 Exercise 2.1 . . . 1444 G.3.2 Exercise 2.4 . . . 1445 G.3.3 Exercise 2.6 . . . 1445 G.3.4 Exercise 2.13 . . . 1446 G.3.5 Exercise 2.14 . . . 1446 G.3.6 Exercise 2.15 . . . 1446 G.3.7 Exercise 2.16 . . . 1446 G.3.8 Exercise 2.17 . . . 1447 G.3.9 Exercise 2.18 . . . 1447 G.3.10 Exercise 2.19 . . . 1447 G.3.11 Exercise 2.20 . . . 1447 G.4 Level 3 . . . 1447 G.4.1 Exercise 3.2 . . . 1447 G.4.2 Exercise 3.3 . . . 1448 G.4.3 Exercise 3.4 . . . 1448 G.4.4 Exercise 3.5 . . . 1448 G.4.5 Exercise 3.6 . . . 1448 G.4.6 Exercise 3.8 . . . 1448 G.5 Other . . . 1448 G.5.1 “Minesweeper (Windows XP)” example . . . 1448
Acronyms used 1451
Glossary 1457
CONTENTS CONTENTS
Index 1460
Bibliography 1469
CONTENTS CONTENTS
Preface
There are several popular meanings of the term “reverse engineering”: 1) The re- verse engineering of software: researching compiled programs; 2) The scanning of 3D structures and the subsequent digital manipulation required order to duplicate them; 3) recreatingDBMS9structure. This book is about the first meaning.
Topics discussed in-depth
x86/x64, ARM/ARM64, MIPS, Java/JVM.
Topics touched upon
Oracle RDBMS (81 on page 1225), Itanium (93 on page 1321), copy-protection don- gles (78 on page 1122), LD_PRELOAD (67.2 on page 1027), stack overflow,ELF10, win32 PE file format (68.2 on page 1036), x86-64 (26.1 on page 628), critical sec- tions (68.4 on page 1081), syscalls (66 on page 1021),TLS11, position-independent code (PIC12) (67.1 on page 1023), profile-guided optimization (95.1 on page 1328), C++ STL (51.4 on page 830), OpenMP (92 on page 1312), SEH (68.3 on page 1046).
About the author
Dennis Yurichev is an experienced reverse engineer and programmer. He can be con- tacted by email: dennis(a)yurichev.com, or on Skype: dennis.yurichev.
9Database management systems
10Executable file format widely used in *NIX systems including Linux
11Thread Local Storage
12Position Independent Code:67.1 on page 1023
CONTENTS CONTENTS
Thanks
For patiently answering all my questions: Andrey “herm1t” Baranovich, Slava “Avid”
Kazakov.
For sending me notes about mistakes and inaccuracies: Stanislav “Beaver” Bobryt- skyy, Alexander Lysenko, Shell Rocket, Zhu Ruijin, Changmin Heo.
For helping me in other ways: Andrew Zubinski, Arnaud Patard (rtp on #debian-arm IRC), Aliaksandr Autayeu.
For translating the book into Simplified Chinese: Archer.
For translating the book into Korean: Byungho Min.
For proofreading: Alexander “Lstar” Chernenkiy, Vladimir Botov, Andrei Brazhuk, Mark “Logxen” Cooper, Yuan Jochen Kang, Mal Malakov, Lewis Porter, Jarle Thorsen.
Vasil Kolev did a great amount of work in proofreading and correcting many mis- takes.
For illustrations and cover art: Andy Nechaevsky.
Thanks also to all the folks on github.com who have contributed notes and correc- tions.
Many LATEX packages were used: I would like to thank the authors as well.
0.0.1 Donate
As it turns out, (technical) writing takes a lot of time and effort.
This book is free, available freely and available in source code form13(LaTeX), and it shall stay that way forever.
It is also ad-free.
My current plan for this book is to add lots of information about: PLANS14. If you want me to continue writing about all of these topics, you might want to consider making a donation.
Ways to donate can be found here: http://yurichev.com/donate.html.
All donors’ names will be included in the hall of fame!
http://yurichev.com/donors.html.
13github.com/dennis714/RE-for-beginners
14github.com/dennis714/RE-for-beginners/blob/master/PLANS
CONTENTS CONTENTS
mini-FAQ
Q: Why one should learn assembly language these days?
A: Unless you are anOS15developer, you probably don’t need to code in assembly—
modern compilers are much better at performing optimizations than humans16. Also, modernCPU17s are very complex devices and assembly knowledge doesn’t re- ally help one to understand their internals. That being said, there are at least two areas where a good understanding of assembly can be helpful: First and foremost, security/malware research. It is also a good way to gain a better understanding of your compiled code whilst debugging. This book is therefore intended for those who want to understand assembly language rather than to code in it, which is why there are many examples of compiler output contained within.
Q: I clicked on a hyperlink inside of a PDF-document, how do I get back?
A: In Adobe Acrobat Reader click Alt+LeftArrow.
Q: Your book is huge! Is there anything shorter?
A: There is shortened lite version found here:http://beginners.re/#lite.
Q: I’m not sure, if I should try to learn reverse engineering or not.
A: Perhaps, the average time to become familiar with the contents of the shortened LITE-version is 1-2 month(s).
Q: May I print this book? Use it for teaching?
A: Of course! That’s why book is licensed under Creative Commons license. One might also want to build one’s own version of book—readhereto find out more.
Q: I want to translate your book to some other language.
A: Readmy note to translators.
Q: How does one get a job in reverse engineering?
A: There are hiring threads that appear from time to time on reddit devoted to RE18 (2013 Q3,2014). Try looking there. A somewhat related hiring thread can be found in the “netsec” subreddit:2014 Q2.
Q: I have a question...
A: Send it to me by email (dennis(a)yurichev.com) or ask your question on my forum:
forum.yurichev.com.
15Operating System
16A very good text about this topic: [Fog13b]
17Central processing unit
18reddit.com/r/ReverseEngineering/
CONTENTS CONTENTS
Praise for Reverse Engineering for Beginners
• “It’s very well done .. and for free .. amazing.”19 Daniel Bilar, Siege Technolo- gies, LLC.
• “... excellent and free”20Pete Finnigan, Oracle RDBMS security guru.
• “... book is interesting, great job!” Michael Sikorski, author ofPractical Mal- ware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software.
• “... my compliments for the very nice tutorial!” Herbert Bos, full professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, co-author ofModern Operating Systems (4th Edition).
• “... It is amazing and unbelievable.” Luis Rocha, CISSP / ISSAP, Technical Manager, Network & Information Security at Verizon Business.
• “Thanks for the great work and your book.” Joris van de Vis, SAP Netweaver
& Security specialist.
• “... reasonable intro to some of the techniques.”21 Mike Stay, teacher at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, Georgia, US.
• “I love this book! I have several students reading it at the moment, plan to use it in graduate course.”22 Sergey Bratus, Research Assistant Professor at the Computer Science Department at Dartmouth College
• “Dennis @Yurichev has published an impressive (and free!) book on reverse engineering”23Tanel Poder, Oracle RDBMS performance tuning expert.
• “This book is some kind of Wikipedia to beginners...” Archer, Chinese Trans- lator, IT Security Researcher.
This is the A5-format version for e-book readers. Although the content is mostly the same, the illustrations are resized and probably not readable. You may try to change scale in your e-book reader. Otherwise, you can always view them in the A4-format version here:beginners.re.
About the Korean translation
In January 2015, the Acorn publishing company (www.acornpub.co.kr) in South Ko- rea did huge amount of work in translating and publishing my book (as it was in August 2014) into Korean.
19twitter.com/daniel_bilar/status/436578617221742593
20twitter.com/petefinnigan/status/400551705797869568
21reddit
22twitter.com/sergeybratus/status/505590326560833536
23twitter.com/TanelPoder/status/524668104065159169
CONTENTS CONTENTS
It’s now available attheir website.
Translator is Byungho Min (twitter/tais9).
The cover art was done by my artistic friend, Andy Nechaevsky : facebook/andy- dinka.
They also hold the copyright to the Korean translation.
So, if you want to have arealbook on your shelf in Korean and want to support my work, it is now available for purchase.
Part I
Code patterns
When the author of this book first started learning C and later, C++, he used to write small pieces of code, compile them, and then look at the assembly language output.
This made it very easy for him to understand what was going on in the code that he had written.24. He did it so many times that the relationship between the C/C++
code and what the compiler produced was imprinted deeply in his mind. It’s easy to imagine instantly a rough outline of C code’s appearance and function. Perhaps this technique could be helpful for someone else.
Sometimes an ancient compilers are used here, in order to get the shortest (or simplest) possible code snippet.
Exercises
When the author of this book studied assembly language, he also often compiled small C-functions and then rewrote them gradually to assembly, trying to make their code as short as possible. This probably is not worth doing in real-world scenarios today, because it’s hard to compete with modern compilers in terms of efficiency.
It is, however, a very good way to gain a better understanding of assembly. Feel free, therefore, to take any assembly code from this book and try to make it shorter.
However, don’t forget to test what you have written.
Optimization levels and debug information
Source code can be compiled by different compilers with various optimization lev- els. Typical compiler has about three such levels, where level zero means disable optimization. Optimization can also be targeted towards code size or code speed.
A non-optimizing compiler is faster and produces more understandable (albeit ver- bose) code, whereas an optimizing compiler is slower and tries to produce code that runs faster (but is not necessarily more compact).
In addition to optimization levels and direction, compiler can include in the result- ing file some debug information, thus producing code for easy debugging.
One of the important features of the ´debug’ code is that it might contain links between each line of the source code and the respective machine code addresses.
Optimizing compilers, on the other hand, tend to produce output where entire lines of source code can be optimized away and thus not even be present in the resulting machine code.
Reverse engineers can encounter either version, simply because some developers turn on the compiler’s optimization flags and others do not. Because of this, we’ll
24In fact, he still does it when he can’t understand what a particular bit of code does.
try to work on examples of both debug and release versions of the code featured in this book, where possible.
CHAPTER 1. A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE CPU CHAPTER 1. A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE CPU
Chapter 1
A short introduction to the CPU
TheCPUis the device which executes the machine code a program consists of.
A short glossary:
Instruction : A primitiveCPUcommand. The simplest examples include: moving data between registers, working with memory and arithmetic primitives. As a rule, eachCPUhas its own instruction set architecture (ISA).
Machine code : Code that theCPUdirectly processes. Each instruction is usually encoded by several bytes.
Assembly language : Mnemonic code and some extensions like macros which are intended to make a programmer’s life easier.
CPU register : EachCPUhas a fixed set of general purpose registers (GPR). ≈8in x86,≈16in x86-64,≈16in ARM. The easiest way to understand a register is to think of it as an untyped temporary variable. Imagine if you were working with high-levelPL1and could only use eight 32-bit (or 64-bit) variables. Yet a lot can be done using just these!
One might wonder why there needs to be a difference between machine code and aPL. The answer lies in the fact that humans andCPUs are not alike— it is much easier for humans to use a high-level PLlike C/C++, Java, Python, etc., but it is easier for aCPU to use a much lower level of abstraction. Perhaps it would be possible to invent aCPUthat can execute high-levelPLcode, but it would be many times more complex than theCPUs we know of today. In a similar fashion, it is very inconvenient for humans to write in assembly language due to it being so low-level and difficult to write in without making a huge amount of annoying mistakes. The program which converts the high-levelPLcode into assembly is called acompiler.
1Programming language
CHAPTER 1. A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE CPU CHAPTER 1. A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE CPU
1.1 A couple of words about different ISAs
The x86ISAhas always been one with variable-length opcodes, so when the 64-bit era came, the x64 extensions did not impact theISAvery significantly. In fact, x86 ISAstill contains a lot of instructions that first appeared in 16-bit 8086 CPU, yet are still found in the CPUs of today.
ARM is aRISC2CPUdesigned with constant-length opcode in mind, which had some advantages in the past. In the very beginning, all ARM instructions were encoded in 4 bytes3. This is now referred to as “ARM mode”.
Then they thought it wasn’t as frugal as they first imagined. In fact, most used CPUinstructions4 in real world applications can be encoded using less informa- tion. They therefore added anotherISA, called Thumb, where each instruction was encoded in just 2 bytes. This is now referred as “Thumb mode”. However, not allARM instructions can be encoded in just 2 bytes, so the Thumb instruction set is somewhat limited. It is worth noting that code compiled for ARM mode and Thumb mode may of course coexist within one single program.
The ARM creators thought Thumb could be extended, giving rise to Thumb-2, which appeared in ARMv7. Thumb-2 still uses 2-byte instructions, but has some new instructions which have the size of 4 bytes. There is a common misconception that Thumb-2 is a mix of ARM and Thumb. This is incorrect. Rather, Thumb-2 was extended to fully support all processor features so it could compete with ARM mode—a goal that was clearly achieved, as the majority of applications for iPod/i- Phone/iPad are compiled for the Thumb-2 instruction set (admittedly, largely due to the fact that that Xcode does this by default). Later the 64-bit ARM came out. ThisISAhas 4-byte opcodes, and lacked the need of any additional Thumb mode. However, the 64-bit requirements affected the ISA, resulting in us now having three ARM instruction sets: ARM mode, Thumb mode (including Thumb-2) and ARM64. TheseISAs intersect partially, but it can be rather said they are differ- entISAs, rather than variations of the same one. Therefore, we would try to add fragments of code in all three ARMISAs in this book.
There are, by the way, many otherRISC ISAs with fixed length 32-bit opcodes, such as MIPS, PowerPC and Alpha AXP.
2Reduced instruction set computing
3By the way, fixed-length instructions are handy because one can calculate the next (or previous) instruction address without effort. This feature will be discussed in the switch() operator (13.2.2 on page 235) section.
4These are MOV/PUSH/CALL/Jcc
CHAPTER 2. THE SIMPLEST FUNCTION CHAPTER 2. THE SIMPLEST FUNCTION
Chapter 2
The simplest Function
The simplest possible function is arguably one that simply returns a constant value:
Here it is:
Listing 2.1: C/C++ Code int f()
{
return 123;
};
Lets compile it!
2.1 x86
Here’s what both the optimizing GCC and MSVC compilers produce on the x86 plat- form:
Listing 2.2: Optimizing GCC/MSVC (assembly output) f:
mov eax, 123 ret
There are just two instructions: the first places the value 123 into theEAXregister, which is used by convention for storing the return value and the second one isRET, which returns execution to thecaller. The caller will take the result from theEAX register.
CHAPTER 2. THE SIMPLEST FUNCTION CHAPTER 2. THE SIMPLEST FUNCTION
2.2 ARM
There are a few differences on the ARM platform:
Listing 2.3: Optimizing Keil 6/2013 (ARM mode) ASM Output f PROC
MOV r0,#0x7b ; 123
BX lr
ENDP
ARM uses the registerR0for returning the results of functions, so 123 is copied intoR0.
The return address is not saved on the local stack in the ARMISA, but rather in the link register, so theBX LRinstruction causes execution to jump to that address—
effectively returning execution to thecaller.
It worth noting thatMOVis a misleading name for the instruction in both x86 and ARMISAs. The data is not in factmoved, butcopied.
2.3 MIPS
There are two naming conventions used in the world of MIPS when naming regis- ters: by number (from $0 to $31) or by pseudoname ($V0, $A0, etc). The GCC assembly output below lists registers by number:
Listing 2.4: Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (assembly output)
j $31
li $2,123 # 0x7b
…whileIDA1does it—by their pseudonames:
Listing 2.5: Optimizing GCC 4.4.5 (IDA)
jr $ra
li $v0, 0x7B
The $2 (or $V0) register is used to store the function’s return value. LI stands for
“Load Immediate” and is the MIPS equivalent to MOV.
The other instruction is the jump instruction (J or JR) which returns the execution flow to thecaller, jumping to the address in the $31 (or $RA) register. This is the register analogous toLR2in ARM.
1Interactive Disassembler and debugger developed byHex-Rays
2Link Register
CHAPTER 2. THE SIMPLEST FUNCTION CHAPTER 2. THE SIMPLEST FUNCTION
You might be wondering why positions of the the load instruction (LI) and the jump instruction (J or JR) are swapped. This is due to aRISCfeature called “branch delay slot”. The why this happens is due to quirk in the architecture of some RISCISAs and isn’t important for our purposes - we just need to remember that in MIPS, the instruction following a jump or branch instruction is executedbefore the jump/brunch instruction itself. As a consequence, branch instructions always swap place with the instruction which must be executed beforehand.
2.3.1 A note about MIPS instruction/register names
Register and instruction names in the world of MIPS are traditionally written in lowercase. However, for the sake of consistency, we’ll stick to using uppercase letters, as it is the convention followed by all otherISAs featured this book.
CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD! CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD!
Chapter 3
Hello, world!
Let’s use the famous example from the book “The C programming Language”[Ker88]:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("hello, world\n");
return 0;
}
3.1 x86
3.1.1 MSVC
Let’s compile it in MSVC 2010:
cl 1.cpp /Fa1.asm
(/Fa option instructs the compiler to generate assembly listing file) Listing 3.1: MSVC 2010
CONST SEGMENT
$SG3830 DB 'hello, world', 0AH, 00H CONST ENDS
PUBLIC _main
EXTRN _printf:PROC
; Function compile flags: /Odtp
CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD! CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD!
_TEXT SEGMENT _main PROC
push ebp mov ebp, esp push OFFSET $SG3830 call _printf
add esp, 4 xor eax, eax
pop ebp
ret 0
_main ENDP _TEXT ENDS
MSVC produces assembly listings in Intel-syntax. The difference between Intel- syntax and AT&T-syntax will be discussed in3.1.3 on page 13.
The compiler generated1.objfile, which is to be linked into1.exe. In our case, the file contains two segments:CONST(for data constants) and_TEXT(for code).
The stringhello, worldin C/C++ has typeconst char[][Str13, p176, 7.3.2], however it does not have its own name. The compiler needs to deal with the string somehow so it defines the internal name$SG3830for it.
That is why the example may be rewritten as follows:
#include <stdio.h>
const char $SG3830[]="hello, world\n";
int main() {
printf($SG3830);
return 0;
}
Let’s go back to the assembly listing. As we can see, the string is terminated by a zero byte, which is standard for C/C++ strings. More about C strings:57.1.1 on page 974.
In the code segment,_TEXT, there is only one function so far:main(). The func- tionmain()starts with prologue code and ends with epilogue code (like almost any function)1.
After the function prologue we see the call to the printf() function: CALL _printf. Before the call the string address (or a pointer to it) containing our greeting is placed on the stack with the help of thePUSHinstruction.
1You can read more about it in section about function prolog and epilog (4 on page 37).
CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD! CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD!
When the printf() function returns the control to the main()function, the string address (or a pointer to it) is still on the stack. Since we do not need it anymore, thestack pointer(theESPregister) needs to be corrected.
ADD ESP, 4 means add 4 to theESPregister value. Why 4? Since this is 32-bit program, we need exactly 4 bytes for address passing through the stack. If it was x64 code we would need 8 bytes. ADD ESP, 4 is effectively equivalent toPOP registerbut without using any register2.
Some compilers (like the Intel C++ Compiler) for the same purpose may emitPOP ECXinstead ofADD(e.g., such a pattern can be observed in the Oracle RDBMS code as it is compiled with the Intel C++ compiler). This instruction has almost the same effect but theECXregister contents will be overwritten. The Intel C++ compiler probably usesPOP ECXsince this instruction’s opcode is shorter thanADD ESP, x(1 byte forPOPagainst 3 forADD).
Here is an example of usingPOPinstead ofADDfrom Oracle RDBMS:
Listing 3.2: Oracle RDBMS 10.2 Linux (app.o file)
.text:0800029A push ebx
.text:0800029B call qksfroChild
.text:080002A0 pop ecx
After callingprintf(), the original C/C++ code contains the statementreturn 0—return 0 as the result of themain()function. In the generated code this is implemented by the instruction XOR EAX, EAX. XORis in fact just “eXclusive OR”3 but the compilers often use it instead ofMOV EAX, 0— again because it is a slightly shorter opcode (2 bytes forXORagainst 5 forMOV).
Some compilers emitSUB EAX, EAX, which meansSUBtract the value in theEAX from the value inEAX, which in any case resulting in zero.
The last instructionRETreturns the control to thecaller. Usually, this is C/C++CRT4 code, which in its turn returns the control to theOS.
3.1.2 GCC
Now let’s try to compile the same C/C++ code in the GCC 4.4.1 compiler in Linux:
gcc 1.c -o 1 Next, with the assistance of theIDAdisassembler, let’s see how themain()function was created.IDA, like MSVC, uses Intel-syntax5.
2CPU flags, however, are modified
3wikipedia
4C runtime library :68.1 on page 1031
5We could also have GCC produce assembly listings in Intel-syntax by applying the options-S - masm=intel.
CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD! CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD!
Listing 3.3: code inIDA
main proc near
var_10 = dword ptr -10h push ebp mov ebp, esp
and esp, 0FFFFFFF0h sub esp, 10h
mov eax, offset aHelloWorld ; "hello, world⤦
Ç \n"
mov [esp+10h+var_10], eax call _printf
mov eax, 0 leave
retn
main endp
The result is almost the same. The address of thehello, worldstring (stored in the data segment) is loaded in theEAXregister first and then it is saved onto the stack. In addition, the function prologue containsAND ESP, 0FFFFFFF0h—this instruction aligns theESPregister value on a 16-byte boundary. This results in all values in the stack being aligned the same way (The CPU performs better if the values it is dealing with are located in memory at addresses aligned on a 4-byte or 16-byte boundary)6.
SUB ESP, 10h allocates 16 bytes on the stack. Although, as we can see hereafter, only 4 are necessary here.
This is because the size of the allocated stack is also aligned on a 16-byte boundary.
The string address (or a pointer to the string) is then stored directly onto the stack without using the PUSH instruction. var_10 —is a local variable and is also an argument forprintf(). Read about it below.
Then theprintf()function is called.
Unlike MSVC, when GCC is compiling without optimization turned on, it emitsMOV EAX, 0instead of a shorter opcode.
The last instruction,LEAVE—is the equivalent of theMOV ESP, EBPandPOP EBPinstruction pair —in other words, this instruction sets thestack pointer(ESP) back and restores theEBPregister to its initial state. This is necessary since we modified these register values (ESPandEBP) at the beginning of the function (by executingMOV EBP, ESP/AND ESP, …).
6Wikipedia: Data structure alignment
CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD! CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD!
3.1.3 GCC: AT&T syntax
Let’s see how this can be represented in assembly language AT&T syntax. This syntax is much more popular in the UNIX-world.
Listing 3.4: let’s compile in GCC 4.7.3 gcc -S 1_1.c
We get this:
Listing 3.5: GCC 4.7.3 .file "1_1.c"
.section .rodata .LC0:
.string "hello, world\n"
.text
.globl main
.type main, @function main:
.LFB0:
.cfi_startproc pushl %ebp
.cfi_def_cfa_offset 8 .cfi_offset 5, -8 movl %esp, %ebp .cfi_def_cfa_register 5 andl $-16, %esp subl $16, %esp movl $.LC0, (%esp) call printf
movl $0, %eax leave
.cfi_restore 5 .cfi_def_cfa 4, 4 ret
.cfi_endproc .LFE0:
.size main, .-main
.ident "GCC: (Ubuntu/Linaro 4.7.3-1ubuntu1) 4.7.3"
.section .note.GNU-stack,"",@progbits
The listing contains many macros (beginning with dot). These are not interesting for us at the moment. For now, for the sake of simplification, we can ignore them (except the.stringmacro which encodes a null-terminated character sequence just like a C-string). Then we’ll see this7:
7This GCC option can be used to eliminate “unnecessary” macros:-fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables
CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD! CHAPTER 3. HELLO, WORLD!
Listing 3.6: GCC 4.7.3 .LC0:
.string "hello, world\n"
main:
pushl %ebp movl %esp, %ebp andl $-16, %esp subl $16, %esp movl $.LC0, (%esp) call printf
movl $0, %eax leave
ret
Some of the major differences between Intel and AT&T syntax are:
• Source and destination operands are written in opposite order.
In Intel-syntax: <instruction> <destination operand> <source operand>.
In AT&T syntax: <instruction> <source operand> <destination operand>.
Here is a way to easy memorise the difference: when you deal with Intel- syntax, you can imagine that there is an equality sign (=) between operands and when you deal with AT&T-syntax imagine there is a right arrow (→)8.
• AT&T: Before register names, a percent sign must be written (%) and before numbers a dollar sign ($). Parentheses are used instead of brackets.
• AT&T: Suffix is added to instructions to define the operand size:
– q — quad (64 bits) – l — long (32 bits) – w — word (16 bits) – b — byte (8 bits)
Let’s go back to the compiled result: it is identical to what we saw inIDA. With one subtle difference:0FFFFFFF0his presented as$-16. It is the same thing:16in the decimal system is0x10in hexadecimal. -0x10is equal to0xFFFFFFF0(for a 32-bit data type).
One more thing: the return value is to be set to 0 by using usualMOV, notXOR.
MOVjust loads value to a register. Its name is a misnomer (data is not moved but rather copied). In other architectures, this instruction is named “LOAD” or “STORE”
or something similar.
8By the way, in some C standard functions (e.g., memcpy(), strcpy()) the arguments are listed in the same way as in Intel-syntax: pointer to the destination memory block at the beginning and then pointer to the source memory block.
