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The Witchcraft Compiler Collection

Welcome to the Witchcraft Compiler Collection !

Purpose

WCC is a collection of compilation tools to perform binary black magic on the GNU/Linux and other POSIX platforms.

User manual

The WCC user manual is available online at : https://github.com/endrazine/wcc/wiki

Installation

Installation Requirements

The Witchcraft Compiler Collection requires the following software to be installed:

capstone, glibc, libbfd, libdl, zlib, libelf, libreadline, libgsl, make

Installation Requirements on Ubuntu/Debian

Under Ubuntu/Debian those dependencies can be installed with the following commands (tested on Ubuntu 22.04):

sudo apt-get install -y clang libbfd-dev uthash-dev libelf-dev libcapstone-dev  libreadline-dev libiberty-dev libgsl-dev build-essential git debootstrap file

Building and Installing:

Fetching the code over git

This will download the code of wcc from the internet to a directory named wcc in the current working directory:

git clone https://github.com/endrazine/wcc.git

You can then enter this directory with:

cd wcc

Initializing git submodules

From your root wcc directory, type:

git submodule init
git submodule update

Building WCC

From your root wcc directory, type:

make

Installing WCC

Then to install wcc, type:

sudo make install

Building the WCC documentation (Optional)

WCC makes use of doxygen to generate its documentation. From the root wcc directory, type

make documentation

Core commands

The following commands constitute the core of the Witchcraft Compiler Collection.

wld : The Witchcraft Linker.

wld takes an ELF executable as an input and modifies it to create a shared library.

wld command line options

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wld
Witchcraft Compiler Collection (WCC) version:0.0.6    (18:10:51 May 10 2024)

Usage: wld -libify [-noinit] file

Options:
    -libify          Transform executable into shared library.
    -noinit          Ignore constructors and desctructors in output library.
jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Example usage of wld

The following example libifies the executable /bin/ls into a shared library named /tmp/ls.so.

jonathan@blackbox:~$ cp /bin/ls /tmp/ls.so
jonathan@blackbox:~$ wld -libify /tmp/ls.so
jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Limits of wld

wld currently only works on ELF binaries. However wld can process ELF executables irrelevant of their architecture or operating system. wld could for instance process Intel, ARM or SPARC executables from Android, Linux, BSD or UNIX operating systems and transform them into "non relocatable shared libraries". Feel free to refer to the documentation under the /doc directory for more ample details.

wcc : The Witchcraft Compiler.

The wcc compiler takes binaries (ELF, PE, ...) as an input and creates valid ELF binaries as an output. It can be used to create relocatable object files from executables or shared libraries.

wcc command line options

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wcc
Witchcraft Compiler Collection (WCC) version:0.0.6    (18:10:50 May 10 2024)

Usage: wcc [options] file

options:

    -o, --output           <output file>
    -m, --march            <architecture>
    -e, --entrypoint       <0xaddress>
    -i, --interpreter      <interpreter>
    -p, --poison           <poison>
    -s, --shared
    -c, --compile
    -S, --static
    -x, --strip
    -X, --sstrip
    -E, --exec
    -C, --core
    -O, --original
    -D, --disasm
    -d, --debug
    -h, --help
    -v, --verbose
    -V, --version


jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Example usage of wcc

The primary use of wcc is to "unlink" (undo the work of a linker) ELF binaries, either executables or shared libraries, back into relocatable shared objects. The following command line attempts to unlink the binary /bin/ls (from GNU binutils) into a relocatable file named /tmp/ls.o

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wcc -c /bin/ls -o /tmp/ls.o
jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

This relocatable file can then be used as if it had been directly produced by a compiler. The following command would use the gcc compiler to link /tmp/ls.o into a shared library /tmp/ls.so

jonathan@blackbox:~$ gcc /tmp/ls.o -o /tmp/ls.so -shared
jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Limits of wcc

wcc will process any file supported by libbfd and produce ELF files that will contain the same mapping when relinked and executed. This includes PE or OSX COFF files in 32 or 64 bits. However, rebuilding relocations is currently supported only for Intel ELF x86_64 binaries. Transforming a PE into an ELF and invoking pure functions is for instance supported.

wsh : The Witchcraft shell

The witchcraft shell accepts ELF shared libraries, ELF ET_DYN executables and Witchcraft Shell Scripts written in Punk-C as an input. It loads all the executables in its own address space and makes their API available for programming in its embedded interpreter. This provides for binaries functionalities similar to those provided via reflection on languages like Java.

wsh command line options

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wsh -h
Usage: wsh [script] [-h|-q|-v|-V|-g] [binary1] [binary2] ... [-x [script_arg1] [script_arg2] ...]

Options:

    -x, --args                Optional script argument separator
    -q, --quiet               Display less output
    -v, --verbose             Display more output
    -g, --global              Bind symbols globally
    -V, --version             Display version and build, then exit

Script:

    If the first argument is an existing file which is not a known binary file format,
    it is assumed to be a lua script and gets executed.

Binaries:

    Any binary file name before the -x tag gets loaded before running the script.
    The last binary loaded is the main binary analyzed.

jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Example usage of wsh

The following command loads the /usr/sbin/apache2 executable within wsh, calls the ap_get_server_banner() function within apache to retrieve its banner and displays it within the wsh interpreter.

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wsh /usr/sbin/apache2
> a = ap_get_server_banner()
> print(a)
Apache/2.4.7
> 

To get help at any time from the wsh interpreter, simply type help. To get help on a particular topic, type help("topic").

The following example illustrates how to display the main wsh help from the interpreter and how to get detailed help on the grep command by calling help("grep") from the wsh interpreter.

> help
  [Shell commands]

	help, quit, exit, shell, exec, clear

  [Functions]

 + basic:
	help(), man()

 + memory display:
	 hexdump(), hex_dump(), hex()

 + memory maps:
	shdrs(), phdrs(), map(), procmap(), bfmap()

 + symbols:
	symbols(), functions(), objects(), info(), search(), headers()

 + memory search:
	grep(), grepptr()

 + load libaries:
	loadbin(), libs(), entrypoints(), rescan()

 + code execution:
	libcall()

 + buffer manipulation:
	xalloc(), ralloc(), xfree(), balloc(), bset(), bget(), rdstr(), rdnum()

 + control flow:
	 breakpoint(), bp()

 + system settings:
	enableaslr(), disableaslr()

 + settings:
	 verbose(), hollywood()

 + advanced:
	ltrace()

Try help("cmdname") for detailed usage on command cmdname.

> help("grep")

	WSH HELP FOR FUNCTION grep


NAME

	grep

SYNOPSIS

	table match = grep(<pattern>, [patternlen], [dumplen], [before])

DESCRIPTION

	Search <pattern> in all ELF sections in memory. Match [patternlen] bytes, then display [dumplen] bytes, optionally including [before] bytes before the match. Results are displayed in enhanced decimal form

RETURN VALUES

	Returns 1 lua table containing matching memory addresses.


> 

Extending wsh with Witchcraft Shell Scripts

The combination of a full lua interpreter in the same address space as the loaded executables and shared libraries in combination with the reflection like capabilities of wsh allow calling any function loaded in the address space from the wsh interpreter transparently. The resulting API, a powerful combination of lua and C API is called Punk-C. Wsh is fully scriptable in Punk-C, and executes Punk-C on the fly via its dynamic interpreter. Scripts in Punk C can be invoked by specifying the full path to wsh in the magic bytes of a wsh shell. The following command displays the content of a Witchcraft shell script:

jonathan@blackbox:/usr/share/wcc/scripts$ cat md5.wsh
#!/usr/bin/wsh

-- Computing a MD5 sum using cryptographic functions from foreign binaries (eg: sshd/OpenSSL)

function str2md5(input)

	out = calloc(33, 1)
	ctx = calloc(1024, 1)

	MD5_Init(ctx)
	MD5_Update(ctx, input, strlen(input))
	MD5_Final(out, ctx)

	free(ctx)
	return out
end

input = "Message needing hashing\n"
hash = str2md5(input)
hexdump(hash,16)

exit(0)
jonathan@blackbox:/usr/share/wcc/scripts$ 

To run this script using the API made available inside the address space of sshd, simply run:

jonathan@blackbox:/usr/share/wcc/scripts$ ./md5.wsh /usr/sbin/sshd 
0x43e8b280    d6 fc 46 91 b0 6f ab 75 4d 9c a7 58 6d 9c 7e 36    V|F.0o+uM.'Xm.~6
jonathan@blackbox:/usr/share/wcc/scripts$ 

Limits of wsh

wsh can only load shared libraries and ET_DYN dynamically linked ELF executables directly. This means ET_EXEC executables may need to be libified using wld before use in wsh. Binaries in other file formats might need to be turned into ELF files using wcc.

Note: Analysing and Executing ARM/SPARC/MIPS binaries "natively" on Intel x86_64 cpus via JIT binary translation

wsh can be cross compiled to ARM, SPARC, MIPS and other platforms and used in association with the qemu's user space emulation mode to provide JIT binary translation on the fly and analyse shared libraries and binaries from other cpus without requiring emulation of a full operating system in a virtual machine. The analyzed binaries are translated from one CPU to an other, and the analysed binaries, the wsh cross compiled analyser and the qemu binary translator share the address space of a single program. This significantly diminishes the complexity of analysing binaries across different hardware by seemingly allowing to run ARM or SPARC binaries on a linux x86_64 machine natively and transparently.

Other commands

The following auxiliary commands are available with WCC. They are typically simple scripts built on top of WCC.

wldd : print shared libraries compilation flags

When compiling C code, it is often required to pass extra arguments to the compiler to signify which shared libraries should be explicitly linked against the compile code. Figuring out those compilation parameters can be cumbersome. The wldd commands displays the shared libraries compilation flags given at compile time for any given ELF binary.

wldd command line options

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wldd 
Usage: /usr/bin/wldd </path/to/bin>

  Returns libraries to be passed to gcc to relink this application.

jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Example usage of wldd

The following command displays shared libraries compilation flags as passed to gcc when compiling /bin/ls from GNU binutils:

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wldd /bin/ls
-lselinux -lacl -lc -lpcre -ldl -lattr 
jonathan@blackbox:~$

wcch : generate C headers from binaries

The wcch command takes an ELF binary path as a command line, and outputs a minimal C header file declaring all the exported global variables and functions from the input binary. This automates prototypes declaration when writing C code and linking with a binary for which C header files are not available.

Example usage of wcch

The following command instructs wcch to generate C headers from the apache2 executable and redirects the output from the standard output to a file named /tmp/apache2.h ready for use as a header in a C application.

jonathan@blackbox:~$ wcch /usr/sbin/apache2 >/tmp/apache2.h
jonathan@blackbox:~$ 

Downloading the source code

The official codebase of the Witchcraft Compiler Collection is hosted on github at https://github.com/endrazine/wcc/ . It uses git modules, so some extra steps are needed to fetch all the code including dependencies. To download the source code of wcc, in a terminal, type:

git clone https://github.com/endrazine/wcc.git
cd wcc
git submodule init
git submodule update

This will create a directory named wcc and fetch all required source code in it.

Greetings

The Witchcraft Compiler Collection uses the following amazing Open Source third party software:

• Capstone, a lightweight multi-platform, multi-architecture disassembly framework http://www.capstone-engine.org/
• Linenoise, A small self-contained alternative to readline and libedit https://github.com/antirez/linenoise
• Openlibm, High quality system independent, portable, open source libm implementation https://github.com/JuliaMath/openlibm
• Lua, The Programming Language Lua https://www.lua.org/
• LuaJit, a Just-In-Time Compiler for Lua http://luajit.org/
• Qemu, in particular its user space mode : https://qemu-project.gitlab.io/qemu/user/main.html
• Uthash and Utlist, Hash tables and linked list implemented as C headers https://troydhanson.github.io/uthash/

Testing

The following companion repository exsists to help test WCC: https://github.com/endrazine/wcc-tests

Licence

The Witchcraft Compiler Collection is published under the MIT License. Please refer to the file named LICENSE for more information.