Author: Erik Pistelli

Cerbero Suite 4.0 is out!

We’re proud to announce the release of Cerbero Suite 4.0!

There are many new features, especially in the advanced version. Support for ARM32/ARM64 in Carbon and the inspection of Windows crash dumps stand out as two major additions.

All of our customers can upgrade at a 50% discount their licenses for the next 3 months! We value our customers and everyone who has bought a license since June should have already received a free upgrade for Cerbero Suite 4! If you fall in that category and haven’t received a new license, please check your spam folder and in case contact us at sales@cerbero.io. Everyone who has acquired a license before June, but in the last 3 months, will get an additional discount.

Starting today we’ll be contacting all of our existing customers and provide them with a discount coupon. If you don’t get an email from us in the next two days, please contact us at sales@cerbero.io!

This is the full list of news:

+ added Carbon loader for Windows user address space
+ added Carbon loader for Windows DMP files
+ added Carbon support for ARM32 and ARM64
+ added Carbon support for PDB symbols
+ added support in Carbon to define data types
+ added memory analysis support for latest Windows 10 versions
– added Windows x64 setup
– added UI hook extensions
+ improved Windows memory analysis support
+ improved Windows DMP support
+ improved Carbon disassembly
+ improved Ghidra plugin and setup
+ improved decompiler output
– improved Hex Editor
– improved file stats view
– improved symbol demangling
– improved Python speed
– improved headers
– improved PE debug directory support
– improved PDB support
– improved dark mode support on macOS
– improved update check
– improved single view mode
– improved settings
– improved Python SDK
– updated SQLite to 3.32.0
– fixed bugs

Windows crash dumps

Inspecting Windows crash dumps is important for many software developers. Cerbero Suite lets you easily inspect both kernel and mini-dumps. You can view the code, load PDB symbols, inspect the call stack, threads, exception information, bug check information, memory and much more.

This feature does not rely on WinDBG and works on every supported platform!

Carbon support for ARM32 and ARM64

ARM32 and ARM64 are now supported in Carbon and naturally also in the Sleigh decompiler!

Carbon loader for Windows user address space

Every Windows address space can now be explored in Carbon, be it from a physical image or from a crash dump.

Carbon support for PDB symbols

PDB files can be automatically downloaded and imported into Carbon. This feature does not rely on Windows APIs and works on every supported platform.

Defining data types in Carbon

Data types can be defined in Carbon by pressing “D” or via the context menu.

The same data type can be reapplied by pressing “W”.

Memory analysis on the latest Windows 10 versions

We added the headers necessary to perform memory analysis on the latest Windows 10 versions.

Throughout the lifetime of the 4.x series, we’ll continue improving on the support for Windows 10!

Windows x64 edition

A Windows x64 edition has been long overdue, but we didn’t want to deprive our users from being able to run Cerbero Suite on older 32-bit versions of Windows, so we decided to keep both x86 and x64 editions!

UI hook extensions

A new type of extension has been introduced. The purpose of this extension type is to provide additional UI elements for specific parts of the UI. We currently use it to create Python plugins in our settings page.

Improved Carbon disassembly

We have improved Carbon all over the place: the analysis, UI, lists. The experience is now much more refined.

Improved Ghidra plugin and setup

We improved the native UI for Ghidra. By default now the assembly is shown in lower case, as we think it’s easier to read (this feature is configurable).

We also added one more toolbar button in Ghidra for the Cerbero Launcher, a way to launch Cerbero tools on the file currently open in Ghidra.

Setting up the native UI for Ghidra is now easier than ever: just go to the settings in Cerbero under ‘Ghidra’ and click on ‘Install Ghidra plugin’, select the root folder of Ghidra and that’s it! Cerbero will take care of the installation for you!

Improved decompiler output

We have improved the decompiler output by inferring the detection of deferred calls and literals from Carbon to it. A before/after screenshot comparison is worth more than a thousand words!

Hex Editor

Apart from fixing some bugs, we have improved the hex editor by providing a wait dialog with progress and abort to every major data operation.

File stats view

We tried to improve the file stats view by providing additional useful information for all the file formats which warranted it.

Improved symbol demangling

We have greatly improved symbols demangling both for Visual C++ and GCC. All type of mangled symbols are supported now!

Improved speed of Python

We now deploy the bytecode files for all our Python plugins in order to decrease their load time.

Improved updates

Cerbero Suite 4 makes the update process even easier than before. Hashes for updates have always been cryptographically verified, but now you can opt to download the update directly from the UI and that too is verified.

Improved PDB support

More PDB strucutres are now explorable from the UI.

Improved settings

Apart from the Ghidra plugin installer, there’s a new tab in the settings to create a portable distribution of Cerbero Suite 4.

Improved SDK

We have increased the amout of exposed SDK and added new APIs. Among the many things we have exposed is the Sleigh decompiler. Here’s a small code sample:

from Pro.UI import *
from Pro.Carbon import *

v = proContext().getCurrentView()
c = v.getCarbon()
d = CarbonSleighDecompiler(c)
s = d.decompileToString(0x004028C9)
print(s)

A Carbon instance can be created entirely from Python of course.

Improved single view mode

Single view mode is perhaps a barely known feature in Cerbero, but a rather useful one. If you press “Ctrl+Alt+S” while in a view, it will hide all other views. Pressing the shortcut again restores the previous state.

In Cerbero Suite 4 we have introduced the concept of dependent views and have updated single view mode to include them.

We can see an example of this by looking at a crash dump. When we are in the disassembly we would like to keep dependent views (like the call stack or the decompiler) visible when switching to single view mode.

Normal state:

Single view mode:

Apart from the news listed here, we have added many refinements and fixed many bugs.

We hope you enjoy this new release!

Happy hacking!

Cerbero Suite 3.5 is out!

We’re happy to announce the release of Cerbero Suite 3.5!

This is a single feature release: it includes integration of the Ghidra decompiler (Sleigh) in our Carbon disassembler. No Ghidra or Java installation is necessary!

The decompiler features navigation, comments and renaming of functions, labels and variables.

If you like the idea, we can further expand the functionality and improve the output in next releases!

Happy hacking!

Cerbero Suite 3.4 is out!

We’re happy to announce the release of Cerbero Suite 3.4!

This release comes with tons of improvements:

– added script editor for Python and JavaScript
– added Python editor workspace
– added Python snippet action
– added Mariana theme
– improved deployment on OS X
+ improved Ghidra native UI
– improved filters
– improved hex workspace
– improved JS debugger
– improved Monokai theme
+ updated Ghidra support to 9.1-BETA
– fixed Header Manager crash due to themes
– fixed some bugs

As you can see from the screen-shots in this post, we have introduced the Mariana theme. I think it’s even easier on the eyes, than the Monokai one.

The Ghidra native UI is now compatible with the latest 9.1-BETA and has been further improved!

Deployment on OS X has been greatly improved by removing the external Python dependency. Just as in the Windows and Linux version, the OS X version now embeds Python.

Also interesting for OS X users: a new instance of Cerbero can be spawned from anywhere in the program by pressing Ctrl+Alt+N (or by clicking the relative toolbar button). This works on other platforms as well, but on OS X it’s especially useful.

The main new feature is the introduction of a script editor for Python and JavaScript. You can open as many editor as you like in a single workspace by running the relative action (or in the case of the Python editor by clicking on on the toolbar button).

Script editors are intended to make writing scripts and executing them extremely fast. They provide a simple mechanism to save scripts and open them by just setting the name of the script. The JavaScript editor also offers a debugging shortcut.

To make the writing of scripts even easier, there’s a new action to insert a Python code snippet.

You can choose from a selection of useful snippets.

This is especially useful to avoid looking up the SDK even for simple things and in time the selection of snippets will grow.

We also improved and added new misc filters.

I personally played many CTFs using Cerbero Suite before working on this release and the improvements are directly related to that. I hope that our users will enjoy these improvements as much as we do!

Happy hacking!

Cerbero Suite 3.3 is out!

We’re happy to announce the release of Cerbero Suite 3.3!

While the most anticipated feature may have been theme support, there’s much more:

– added theme support
– added MachO Carbon loader
– added Monokai theme
– improved Ghidra native UI
– improved disassembly view
– made Windows XP compatible
– fixed some bugs

Improved Ghidra native UI

Apart from themes, most of the work went into improving the Ghidra native UI. Specifically we improved navigation, added comments in the decompiler, added support for renaming variables and parameters both in the disassembly and the decompiler, improved cross references, added make code / undefine commands, added status updates, fixed bugs.

Also, if you’d like to run Ghidra and the native UI on two different machines, just open the install.pdf in util/ghidra.zip to learn how. 🙂

Carbon: MachO loader

We also added support for x86/x64 MachO files in Carbon!

XP compatibility

Cerbero can now run on Windows XP.

Everything is working apart from the Python ssl module (we might provide support for it in the future). So if you need a malware triage tool or just a Python3 interpreter on XP, you can use Cerbero. 🙂

Happy hacking!

Theme support

The upcoming 3.3 version of Cerbero features theme support. I decided to add this, because I received multiple requests on Twitter and especially took into consideration the fact that some people have difficulty with bright colors because of their eyesight.

Here’s a preview of my Monokai theme for Cerbero:

More themes will be added in time and you can even create your own or customize existing ones.

Adding theme support in Cerbero took more than a week of work, because of the many custom controls it has and that’s also why I have postponed it for a lot of time. But since I decided to do it, I tried to do it properly.

Cerbero uses Qt as UI library and, as many of you know, Qt can be skinned via CSS stylesheets. However, Cerbero has not only many custom controls, but its own UI SDK which isn’t bound to Qt. So a theme needs to take into consideration those colors as well.

Let’s take a look at a snippet of the Monokai theme:


    <entry name="style" value="fusion"/>

    <entry name="stylesheet">
    
*, QTabBar::tab {
    background-color: rgb(40, 41, 35);
    color: rgb(248, 248, 242);
    selection-background-color: rgb(72, 71, 61);
    alternate-background-color: rgb(45, 46, 40);
}

/* tab bar */

QTabBar::tab {
    padding: 6px;
}

/* ... */

    </entry>
    
    <!-- ... -->
    
    <entry name="hexed_bg_color" value="rgb(40, 41, 35)"/>
    <entry name="hexed_ro_bg_color" value="rgb(40, 41, 35)"/>
    <entry name="hexed_pen_color" value="rgb(103, 216, 239)"/>
    <entry name="hexed_sel_color" value="rgb(72, 71, 61)"/>
    <entry name="hexed_misc1_color" value="rgb(248, 248, 242)"/>
    <entry name="hexed_misc2_color" value="rgb(231, 219, 115)"/>

    <!-- ... -->
</theme>

The style entry determines the Qt style to use for this theme. If not specified, the default style will be used. The stylesheet entry contains the CSS. The other entries represent custom colors.

Since Carbon comes with its own set of themes, the “themes” directory contains a sub-directory named “carbon” which contains them.

If you want to create your own themes or customize an existing one, you can create a new theme in your user theme directory, which can easily be opened from the settings:

If you don’t want to create an entirely new theme, what you can do is to inherit from an existing one. To do that just create a new theme specifying its inheritance:


    <entry name="stylesheet">

QTabBar::tab {
    padding: 16px;
}
    </entry>

While all specified entries will simply replace existing entries, the stylesheet one is special, because it will be appended to the inherited stylesheet. In this case we created a theme that does nothing else than to increase the padding in tab bar buttons.

In the same way we can customize individual colors. The inheritance of themes works up to a depth of 5, so you can inherit from a theme which already inherits from another theme.

I hope you like it! 🙂

Cerbero Suite 3.2 is out!

This is a rather unusual release and as you can see the change-list is short:

+ added experimental native UI for Ghidra
+ improved disassembly speed
– fixed SSL on Linux

The main addition in version 3.2 is an experimental native UI for Ghidra. Here are a few screen-shots on all supported platforms.

Windows:

Linux:

OS X:

Since this experimental UI has been more of a personal project, I discussed it in more depth on my blog.

As this is a proof of concept, it will be of fundamental importance whether or not you, the user, want this project to mature. Feedback is highly appreciated and will be taken into consideration in order to prioritize this feature and decide how much time to invest into it. Even curses are considered valuable feedback! 🙂

Supporting Ghidra has already had its benefits even considering other features. In fact, in version 3.2 the disassembly view of Carbon has been made faster as a positive side-effect. More of these benefits are about to come as we’re preparing a lot of cool new additions for the upcoming releases. 🙂

Happy hacking!

Cerbero Suite 3.1 is out!

Version 3.1 is out with many improvements! The main news is the support in Carbon for ELF files and the improved deployment of the Linux edition.

This is the full list of news:

+ added ELF Carbon loader
+ added edit bytes command to Carbon
+ added write method to Carbon
+ added detection of 16-bits wide strings in Carbon
+ added open in hex editor action in Carbon
+ added filters to Carbon
+ added Carbon Monokai theme
– added single view mode (Ctrl+Alt+S)
– improved deployment on Linux
+ improved x86/x64 disassembly
– improved hex workspace
– updated capstone to 4.0.1
– fixed misidentified object crash
– fixed some bugs

Carbon: ELF loader

Here we can see an ELF x64 file in Carbon. As we can see we have an entry point with a call to __libc_start_main.

We can follow the first argument which will bring us to the main function.

.text:0x000007BA main                    proc start
.text:0x000007BA                                                                ; EXPORT
.text:0x000007BA                                                                ; DATA XREF: 0x000006CD
.text:0x000007BA   55                    push   rbp
.text:0x000007BB   48 89 E5              mov    rbp, rsp
.text:0x000007BE   8B 05 4C 08 20+       mov    eax, dword ptr [rip + 0x20084C]
.text:0x000007C4   89 C6                 mov    esi, eax
.text:0x000007C6   48 8D 3D B7 00+       lea    rdi, [rip + 0xB7]               ; "test is: %d\n"
.text:0x000007CD   B8 00 00 00 00        mov    eax, 0
.text:0x000007D2   E8 B9 FE FF FF        call   plt_002 -> printf
.text:0x000007D7   B8 00 00 00 00        mov    eax, 0
.text:0x000007DC   E8 9F FE FF FF        call   plt_001 -> libfunc
.text:0x000007E1   89 C6                 mov    esi, eax
.text:0x000007E3   48 8D 3D A7 00+       lea    rdi, [rip + 0xA7]               ; "libfunc result is: %d\n"
.text:0x000007EA   B8 00 00 00 00        mov    eax, 0
.text:0x000007EF   E8 9C FE FF FF        call   plt_002 -> printf
.text:0x000007F4   B8 00 00 00 00        mov    eax, 0
.text:0x000007F9   5D                    pop    rbp
.text:0x000007FA   C3                    ret
.text:0x000007FA
.text:0x000007FA main                    proc end

Carbon: detection of 16-bits wide strings

Simple 16-bit wide strings are now automatically detected in Carbon.

Carbon: open in hex editor action

It is now possible to open the hex editor from the disassembly. To demonstrate this feature I crafted a small executable which asks for a password and prints an error message if the password is wrong.

We can easily find the “wrong password” string in Carbon by pressing Ctrl+5.

Right before the referenced string, there’s a scanf followed by a strcmp.

We go to the jne which evaluates the result of the strcmp and we open the hex editor from the contextual menu. It will ask us to open a file (it must be a copy of the file we’re analysing).

We can just nop the two bytes representing the jne and then we save the file.

Whatever password we insert now, it will be accepted.

Carbon: filters

While filters are already accessible from hex views, it is now possible to access them from Carbon as well.

Let’s take the same sample analyzed in the previous blog post with xored strings. We select on of those xored strings and we open the filters from the contextual menu or by pressing Ctrl+T.

We can now test out a filter on the selected bytes. In this case we simply use a xor to see the string in plain.

Carbon: Monokai theme

The Monokai theme has been added to Carbon.

I have been using this theme for some development projects and wondered what it would look like in a disassembly. I don’t know about you, but I like it… 🙂

Single-view mode

While it has always been possible to trigger the full-screen mode via Ctrl+Alt+F, now there’s also single-view mode which can be triggered via Ctrl+Alt+S.

What it does is to hide all other views, leaving only the focused view open. Press the same shortcut to exit the mode and have all other views visible again.

Improved Linux deployment

The Linux edition has been drastically improved by simplifying its deployment. As a result it should now be compatible with many more versions of Linux, without having to adjust dependencies. It also comes with a built-in Python distribution, just like the Windows edition.

Carbon: improved x86/x64 disassembly

The disassembly in Carbon has been improved so that it now shows import forward calls. Let’s take this simple call to __crtTerminateProcess.

If we follow the call, we’ll see that it just calls a jumps which in turn jumps to the actual API.

These sort of calls to jumps or jumps to jumps are now automatically resolved to improve the readability of the code.

Improved hex workspace

The hex workspace comes with a number of small improvements, but mainly the initial layout doesn’t show the output view by default.

We hope you enjoy this version as we’re already working on the next one and I can’t wait to show you some of the cool things we’re working on. 🙂

Happy hacking!

String decryption with Carbon

Developing Carbon, I haven’t had the time to play much with it myself. 🙂 One of the most essential features in a disassembler is the capability to let the users write scripts and modify the disassembly itself. Carbon has a rich SDK and this is a little tutorial to introduce a bit how it works.

Before trying out any of the scripts in this tutorial, make sure to update to the newest 3.0.2 version, as we just fixed a few bugs related to the Carbon Python SDK.

So let’s start!

I wrote a small program with some encrypted strings.

#include <stdio.h>

unsigned char s1[13] = { 0x84, 0xA9, 0xA0, 0xA0, 0xA3, 0xE0, 0xEC, 0xBB, 0xA3, 0xBE, 0xA0, 0xA8, 0xED };
unsigned char s2[17] = { 0x98, 0xA4, 0xA5, 0xBF, 0xEC, 0xA5, 0xBF, 0xEC, 0x9F, 0x9C, 0x8D, 0x9E, 0x98, 0x8D, 0xED, 0xED, 0xED };
unsigned char s3[11] = { 0x82, 0xA3, 0xE0, 0xEC, 0xBE, 0xA9, 0xAD, 0xA0, 0xA0, 0xB5, 0xE2 };

char *decrypt(unsigned char *s, size_t n)
{
	for (size_t i = 0; i < n; i++)
		s[i] ^= 0xCC;
	return (char *) s;
}

#define DS(s) decrypt(s, sizeof (s))

int main()
{
	puts(DS(s1));
	puts(DS(s2));
	puts(DS(s3));
	return 0;
}

The decryption function is super-simple, but that’s not important for our purposes.

I disassembled the debug version of the program, because I didn’t want release optimizations like the decrypt function getting inlined. Not that it matters much, but in a real-world scenario a longer decryption function wouldn’t get inlined.

By going to the decrypt function, we end up to a jmp which points to the actual function code.

.text:0x0041114A decrypt                 proc start
.text:0x0041114A                                     ; CODE XREF: 0x00411465
.text:0x0041114A                                     ; CODE XREF: 0x00411487
.text:0x0041114A                                     ; CODE XREF: 0x004114A9
.text:0x0041114A   E9 71 02 00 00        jmp    sub_4113C0

At this point, the SDK offers us many possible approaches to find all occurrences of encrypted strings. We could, for instance, enumerate all disassembled instructions. But that’s not very fast. A better approach is to get all xrefs to the decrypt function and then proceed from there.

First we get the current view.

v = proContext().getCurrentView()
ca = v.getCarbon()
db = ca.getDB()

Then we get all xrefs to the decrypt function.

xrefs = db.getXRefs(0x0041114A, True)

We enumerate all xrefs and we extract address and length of each string.

it = xrefs.iterator()
    while it.hasNext():
        xref = it.next()
        # retrieve address and length of the string
        buf = ca.read(xref.origin - 6, 6)
        slen = buf[0]
        saddr = struct.unpack_from("<I", buf, 2)[0]

We decrypt the string.

s = ca.read(saddr, slen) 
s = bytes([c ^ 0xCC for c in s]).decode("utf-8")

At this point we can add a comment to each push of the string address with the decrypted string.

comment = caComment()
comment.address = xref.origin - 5
comment.text = s
db.setComment(comment)

As final touch, we tell the view to update, in order to show us the changes we made to the underlying database.

v.update()

Here’s the complete script which we can execute via Ctrl+Alt+R (we have to make sure that we are executing the script while the focus is on the disassembly view, otherwise it won’t work).

from Pro.UI import proContext
from Pro.Carbon import caComment
import struct

def decrypt_strings():
    v = proContext().getCurrentView()
    ca = v.getCarbon()
    db = ca.getDB()
    # get all xrefs to the decryption function
    xrefs = db.getXRefs(0x0041114A, True)
    it = xrefs.iterator()
    while it.hasNext():
        xref = it.next()
        # retrieve address and length of the string
        buf = ca.read(xref.origin - 6, 6)
        slen = buf[0]
        saddr = struct.unpack_from("<I", buf, 2)[0]
        # decrypt string
        s = ca.read(saddr, slen) 
        s = bytes([c ^ 0xCC for c in s]).decode("utf-8")
        # comment
        comment = caComment()
        comment.address = xref.origin - 5
        comment.text = s
        db.setComment(comment)
    # update the view
    v.update()
    
decrypt_strings()

It will result in the decrypted strings shown as comments.

This could be the end of the tutorial. However, in the upcoming 3.1 version I just added the capability to overwrite bytes in the disassembly. This feature is both available from the context menu (Edit bytes) under the shortcut “E” or from the SDK via the Carbon write method.

What it does is to patch bytes in the database only: the original file won’t be touched!

So let’s modify the last part of the script above: 

        # decrypt string
        s = ca.read(saddr, slen) 
        s = bytes([c ^ 0xCC for c in s])
        # overwrite in disasm
        ca.write(saddr, s)

Please notice that I removed the “.decode(“utf-8″)” part of the script, as now I’m passing a bytes object to the write method.

This is the result.

.text:0x0041145E   push   0xD
.text:0x00411460   push   0x418000                        ; "Hello, world!"
.text:0x00411465   call   decrypt
.text:0x0041146A   add    esp, 8
.text:0x0041146D   mov    esi, esp
.text:0x0041146F   push   eax
.text:0x00411470   call   dword ptr [0x419114] -> MSVCR120D.puts
.text:0x00411476   add    esp, 4
.text:0x00411479   cmp    esi, esp
.text:0x0041147B   call   sub_411136
.text:0x00411480   push   0x11
.text:0x00411482   push   0x418010                        ; "This is SPARTA!!!"
.text:0x00411487   call   decrypt
.text:0x0041148C   add    esp, 8
.text:0x0041148F   mov    esi, esp
.text:0x00411491   push   eax
.text:0x00411492   call   dword ptr [0x419114] -> MSVCR120D.puts
.text:0x00411498   add    esp, 4
.text:0x0041149B   cmp    esi, esp
.text:0x0041149D   call   sub_411136
.text:0x004114A2   push   0xB
.text:0x004114A4   push   0x418024                        ; "No, really."
.text:0x004114A9   call   decrypt
.text:0x004114AE   add    esp, 8
.text:0x004114B1   mov    esi, esp
.text:0x004114B3   push   eax
.text:0x004114B4   call   dword ptr [0x419114] -> MSVCR120D.puts

I didn’t add any comment: the strings are now detected automatically by the disassembler and shown as comments.

Perhaps for this particular task it’s better to use the first approach, instead of changing bytes in the database, but the capability to overwrite bytes becomes important when dealing with self-modifying code or other tasks.

I hope you enjoyed this first tutorial. 🙂

Happy hacking!

Cerbero Suite 3.0 is out!

We’re proud to announce the release of the new 3.0 version of Cerbero Suite!

The main news for the advanced version is the introduction of the Carbon Interactive Disassembler and of a full-fledged hex-editor, while the standard version features only the hex-editor.

We have removed the nag-screen from our trial, making ours the most permissive trial of all time. 🙂 Truth is, I have never been a fan of software protections, as they degrade the experience for every user, including customers and limit the immediacy of application of the software when needed.

We live in a time with virtual machines and it’s often necessary to install something on the fly and use it right away. That’s also why we included a local Python distribution in our installer on Windows, so that users are no longer required to separately install Python and configure it in our software, but can use all the functionality right away after a quick installation process.

While we changed the prices of our commercial licenses, we kept basically unchanged prices for personal licenses. Also, for a week starting today all personal licenses are sold at a discount, so hurry up! 😉

All of our customers can upgrade at a 50% discount their licenses for the next 3 months. Not only that, for the same period of time, customers of the 2.x series can purchase new licenses at a 50% discount! If you want to upgrade or purchase a new license at a discount, please contact us at sales@icerbero.com.

As usual our licenses will be valid for the whole duration of the 3.x series. Because of this licensing scheme we offer even bigger discounts to anyone who bought a license in the last two months. Please contact us at sales@icerbero.com to get a precise renewal quote.

This is the full list of news for the 3.0 version:

+ added Carbon interactive disassembler
– added hex editing workspace
– added command line workspace
+ added Windows DMP format support
+ added Windows Hibernation files format support
– added undo capability in hex views
– exposed workspaces to Python
– improved appearance on high resolution displays
– improved support for SQLite files
+ improved support for EML files
– included local python on Windows

(Note: entries with the ‘+’ sign apply only to the advanced edition.)

As we want to share our road-map with our users, in the next releases we’ll:

– Improve some of the rough edges still present in Carbon.
– Continue working on our x86/x64 analysis.
– Add loaders for ELF and Mach-O.
– Start working on creating signatures for library functions.
– Improve code analysis for memory images.
– Further improve memory analysis.
– Start working on analysis for ARM. This, however, may take a while.

Have a great day and happy hacking! 😉

Carbon Interactive Disassembler

Getting close to the release date of the 3.0 version of Cerbero Suite, it’s time to announce the main feature of the advanced edition: an interactive disassembler for x86/x64.

The initial intent was to enable our users to inspect code in memory dumps as well as shellcode. Today we have very advanced disassemblers such as IDA and Ghidra and it wouldn’t have made sense to try and mimic one of these tools. That’s why I approached the design of the disassembler also considering how Cerbero Suite is being used by our customers.

Cerbero Suite is heavily used as a tool for initial triage of files and that’s why I wanted its disassembler to reflect this nature. I remembered the good old days using W32Dasm and took inspiration from that. Of course, W32Dasm wouldn’t be able to cope with the complexity of today’s world and a 1:1 transposition wouldn’t work.

That’s why in the design of Carbon I tried to combine the immediacy of a tool such as W32Dasm with the flexibility of a more advanced one.

So let’s start with presenting a list of features:

Flat disassembly view

The Carbon disassembler comes with a flat disasm view showing all the instructions in a file. I don’t exclude it will feature a graph view one day as well, but it’s not a priority.

Recursive disassembly

A recursive disassembler is necessary to tackle cases in which the code is interrupted by data. Carbon will try to do its best to disassemble in a short period of time, while still performing basic analysis.

Speed

Carbon is multi-thread and seems to handle large files quite fast. This is very useful for the initial triage of a file.

Here we can see the analysis on a 60 MB chrome DLL performed in about ten minutes. And this while running in a virtual machine.

The challenge in the future will be to maintain speed while adding even more analysis passages.

x86/x64 support

Carbon supports both x86 and x64 code. More architectures will be added in the future.

In fact, the design of Carbon will permit to mix architectures in the same disassembly view.

Unlimited databases

A single project in Cerbero can contain unlimited Carbon databases. This means if you’re analyzing a Zip file with 10 executable files, then every one of these files can have its own database.

Not only that: a single file can have multiple databases, just click on the Carbon toolbar button or press “Ctrl+Alt+C” to add a new Carbon database.

And if you’re not satisfied with an analysis, it’s not an issue: you can easily delete it by right-clicking on the related Summary entry or by selecting it and pressing “Del”.

Scripting

As most of the functionality of Cerbero Suite is exposed to Python, this is true for Carbon as well. Most of the code of Carbon, including its database, is exposed to Python.

We can load and disassemble a file in a few lines of code.

    s = createContainerFromFile(a)
    obj = PEObject()
    obj.Load(s)
    
    c = Carbon()
    c.setObject(obj, True)
    if c.createDB(dbname) != CARBON_OK:
        print("error: couldn't create DB")
        return False
    if c.load() != CARBON_OK:
        print("error: couldn't load file")
        return False
    c.resumeAnalysis()
    # wait for the analysis to finish...

We can modify and explore every part of its internal database after the analysis has been completed, or we can create a view and show the disassembly:

    ctx = proContext()
    v = ctx.createView(ProView.Type_Carbon, "test")
    ctx.addView(v, True)
    v.setCarbon(c)

The internal database uses SQLite, making it easy to explore and modify it even without using the SDK.

Python loaders

I took early on the decision of writing all file loaders in Python. While this may make the loading itself of the file a little slower (although not that much), it provides enormous flexibility by allowing users to customize the loaders and adding functionality. Also adding new file loaders is extremely simple.

The whole loader for PE files is about 350 lines of code. And here is the loader for raw files:

from Pro.Carbon import *

class RawLoader(CarbonLoader):

    def __init__(self):
        super(RawLoader, self).__init__()
        
    def load(self):
        # get parameters
        p = self.carbon().getParameters()
        try:
            arch = int(p.value("arch", str(CarbonType_I_x86)), 16)
        except:
            print("carbon error: invalid arch")
            arch = CarbonType_I_x86
        try:
            base = int(p.value("base", "0"), 16)
        except:
            print("carbon error: invalid base address")
            base = 0
        # load
        db = self.carbon().getDB()
        obj = self.carbon().getObject()
        # add region
        e = caRegion()
        e.def_type_id = arch
        e.flags = caRegion.READ | caRegion.WRITE | caRegion.EXEC
        e.start = base
        e.end = e.start + obj.GetSize()
        e.offset = 0
        db.addRegion(e)
        # don't disassemble automatically
        db.setState(caMain.FINISHED)
        return CARBON_OK

def newRawLoader():
    return RawLoader()

Once you’re familiar with the SDK, it’s quite easy to add new loaders.

Raw / PE loader

Initial file support comes for PE and raw files.

This, for instance, is some disassembled shellcode.

In memory PEs

One of the main cool features is the capability to analyze in-memory PE files.

Here is the code of an in-memory PE:

Of course, the disassembly is limited to memory pages which haven’t been paged out, so there might be some gaps.

We haven’t played yet much with this feature and its functionality will be extended with upcoming releases.

Cross references

Of course, no decent disassembler can lack cross references:

We can also choose how many cross references we want to see from the settings:

Renaming

We can name and rename any location or function in the code. Duplicates are allowed. Any why shouldn’t they? We could have more than one method with “jmp ERROR” instances, even if the ERROR doesn’t point to the same location.

Make code/undefine

We can transform undefined data to code by pressing “C” or, conversely, transform code to undefined data pressing “U”.

Here we add a new Carbon database to a shellcode. As you can see it’s all undefined data initially:

After pressing “C” at the first byte, we get some initial instructions:

However, as we can see, the highlighted jump is invalid. By following the “jne” before of the “jmp” we can see that we actually jump in a byte after the “jmp” instruction. So what we do is to press “U” on the “jmp” and then press “C” on the byte at address 0xA.

After pressing “C” again at 0xA:

Now we can properly analyze the shellcode.

Functions

We can easily define and undefine functions wherever we want.

Exceptions

x64 exceptions are already supported.

Comments

One of the most essential features is the capability to add comments.

Flagged locations

You can also flag locations by pressing “Alt+M” or jump to a flagged location via “Ctrl+M”.

Lists

The shortcuts going from “Ctrl+1” to “Ctrl+4” present you various lists of things in the disassembly which you can go to.

Ctrl+1 shows the list of entry-points:

Ctrl+2 shows the list of functions:

Ctrl+3 shows the list of imports:

Ctrl+4 shows the list of exports:

Strings

What about a good-old-days list of strings? That can be created by pressing “Ctrl+5”:

Once we jump to a string we can examine the locations in the code where it is used:

The disassembly itself will try to recognize strings and present them as self-generated comments whenever appropriate:

Integration

Great care has been taken to fit Carbon nicely in the entire logic of Cerbero Suite. Carbon databases are saved inside Cerbero Suite projects just as any other part of the analysis of a file.

While Carbon already provides support for flagged locations, nothing prevents you to use bookmarks as well to mark locations and jump back to them. The difference is that flagged locations are specific to an individual Carbon database, while bookmarks can span across databases and different files.

Themes

Last but not least: some eye candy. From the settings it’s possible to switch on the fly the color theme of the disassembly. The first release comes with the following four themes.

Light:

Classic:

Iceberg:

Dasm:

I’m sure that in the future we’ll be adding even more fun color themes. 🙂

Coming soon!