ripr

ripr is a tool that helps you rip out functionality from binary code and use it from Python. It accomplishes this by pairing the Unicorn-Engine with Binary Ninja. Currently, x86, x64, and arm are supported and work to a reasonable degree.

Introduction

Reimplementing functionality is a common, often time-consuming, and sometimes arduous process that comes up frequently during reverse engineering. A few examples:

• A CTF challenge has a custom encoding/decoding scheme you need to use in your solution script
• A piece of malware uses a custom hashing or encryption function you need to implement
• You need to make sure your reimplementation behaves exactly as it would on the original architecture

ripr attempts to automatically generate a python class that is functionally identical to a selected piece of code by statically gathering sufficient information and wrapping it all into a "harness" for the unicorn emulator.

For some concrete examples, check out the sample folder!

Installation

The manual installation process looks like this:

1. Clone this repo to your local machine
2. Find the location of your plugins directory from Binary Ninja by clicking on Tools --> Open Plugin Folder...
3. Place this repo in that directory, or create a symlink pointing to it.

Usage

Packaging a Function

From within Binary Ninja, right click anywhere inside of a function and then select:

Plugins --> ripr --> Package Function

See the Options while Packaging section for details about prompts that may appear during this process.

Packaging Specific Basic Blocks

You can also choose to only package specific basic blocks rather than the entire function.

Select any instruction inside the basic block of interest, and from the right click menu, choose [ripr] Package Basic Block. Repeat this for any other basic blocks you want to gather.

Finally, select Generate Selected BBs from the context menu to have ripr generate output for them.

Contextual Highlighting

ripr will contextualize code you've selected for packaging within the GUI.

• Basic Blocks that have been included or identified have their background color darkened
• Instructions that have caused a data dependency to be identified are highlighted Yellow
• Call instructions to imported functions are highlighted Red
• Call instructions to functions inside the target binary are highlighted Blue
• Instructions that access unintialized variables are highlighed Orange (Basic Block Mode).

This is meant to give the user visual cues about what ripr has seen and automatically identified, making it easier to see "right off the bat" whether manual modification of the package is necessary.

Options while Packaging

There are a few different prompts which may appear while packaging a function.

Code contains calls to Imported Functions. How should this be handled?

Choosing "Hook" will allow you to write-in your own functionality that runs in lieu of imported functions. Selecting "Nop out Calls" will replace the call instruction with a series of NOPs.

Target code may depend on outside code. Attempt to map automatically?

Your selected code contains calls to other functions within the binary. Answering yes will automatically map those functions.

Use Section Marking Mode for data dependencies?

Answering yes will map all sections of the binary that are touched by the target code. Answering No will use Page-Marking mode, where every page used by the target code is mapped into emulator memory.

Using a ripr "package"

Once a selection of code has been packaged, you will have a python class which encapsulates its functionality. The basic process of using it looks like this:

1. Instantiate the class
2. Call the run() method

Assuming my_ripped_code is the class name:

x = my_ripped_code()
y = x.run()

All Unicorn functionality is exposed via the mu attribute and should work as expected.

Implementing "Imported Calls"

If you choose to hook calls to imported functions during the packaging stage, your generated class will contain stub-functions that are called when the imported call would originally have been called.

For example, if your code contained calls to puts and malloc, the following would be generated in your class:

def hook_puts(self):
    pass
def hook_malloc(self):
    pass

Any code you write within these functions will be called in lieu of the actual imported call. If you wanted a reasonable approximation of puts (and were emulating x64 code), you could do:

def hook_puts(self):
    addr = self.mu.reg_read(UC_X86_REG_RDI)
    mem = self.mu.mem_read(addr, 0x200)
    print "%s" % (mem.split("\x00")[0])

You have full access to all of Unicorn's methods via the mu attribute so it is possible to update the emulator context in any way necessary in order to mimic the behavior of a call or perform any actions you'd like instead of the call.

Function Arguments

ripr has some support for automatically generating "argument aware" output. When information about a function's parameters is available to Binary Ninja, ripr will generate its run functions in the form:

def run(self, arg_1, arg_2, ...)

When dealing with non-pointer types, your arguments will be written into the expected location in the emulated environment.

For "single depth" pointers, (e.g char *, int *), ripr will map memory, copy your argument to it, and place the address of that mapped memory into the appropriate location.

For pointers with a depth greater than 1, ripr falls back on default behaviour.

If you need to manually set up arguments, you can directly manipulate unicorn's state via the mu attribute. For example, assuming you are emulating a 32-bit x86 function, you could do the following:

def run(self, arg1, arg2):
    self.mu.reg_write(UC_X86_REG_ESP, 0x7fffff00)
    self.mu.mem_write(0x7fffff00, '\x01\x00\x00\x00')

    self.mu.mem_write(0x7fffff04, arg1)
    self.mu.mem_write(0x7fffff08, arg2)
    

    self._start_unicorn(0x80484bb)
    return self.mu.reg_read(UC_X86_REG_EAX)

Code Structure

• packager.py -- High Level Functionality. Code here drives the process of gathering necessary data
• codegen.py -- Contains code for actually generating the python output from the gathered data
• analysis_engine.py -- Wraps static analysis engine functionality into a common interface
• dependency.py -- Contains code for finding code and data that the target code needs in order to function corrrectly
• conScan.py -- Contains "convenience" analyses that help ripr output easier-to-use code
• gui.py -- A collection of hacks that resembles a user interface
  • Reuses lots of code from the Binjadock project to display results

Testing

The current tests will package up some functions across the 3 supported architectures found in the sample folder.

To run the tests:

cd <ripr_directory>
python -m unittest discover -t ../