One framework to build them all, one framework to name them, and in their IDBs to bind them

Authors: Luca Ebach, Tilman Frosch

Rejoice everyone, today we pushed bindifflib to our Github! Bindifflib is a framework to build a set of libraries with a set of different compilers, currently the compilers of Visual Studio 2010, 2013, 2015, and 2017 – both 32 bit and 64 bit. After compilation, bindifflib will import all DLLs into IDA Pro and will use the Program Database (PDB) files to properly name (almost) all functions in the IDB.

We have created bindifflib out of the need speed up our understanding of binary code dropped at our doorstep, mostly malware. Occasionally, we encounter larger binaries that smell of statically linked libraries. Figuring out which part of the binary is a library, which library specifically, and which part is actually relevant, often takes some time that could be spent better and is also not very exciting. Fortunately there is BinDiff! Having some functions already identified allows us to spend the time to understand the purpose of the code and the authors‘ intentions instead of first digging through the basic capabilities as provided by knowing that a certain library was used in general. So let‘s just create some targets to diff a unknown binary against, so that we can focus our reversing efforts on the non-generic parts of the binary. Having just one library compiled by one compiler didn’t really cut it, so it was time to automate things to have a selection of likely or frequently used libraries compiled with a set of popular compilers. Naturally, one could also replace „likely“ and „frequently“ by „vulnerable“ and head into a completely different direction that bindifflib can help with.

We consider the code more a proof of concept than a software product. Use at your own risk, we love feedback!

Find the code here: https://github.com/GDATAAdvancedAnalytics/bindifflib

Article Link: https://cyber.wtf/2018/09/21/one-framework-to-build-them-all-one-framework-to-name-them-and-in-their-idbs-to-bind-them/