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I am writing a script which should first place a breakpoint on start, _start, _main, or main and then start the IDA Pro debugger. It then should enumerate the modules looking for "kernel32.dll" and finally, scan the kernel32.dll starting from the module base address to the size address, checking each line for the function name "ExitProcess" and if found, place a breakpoint on it. Finally, it should run to this breakpoint.

The script is not working; it freezes up IDA Pro completely after iteration 4818 and after doing some math with the base and size, I noticed that the actual size of the module is also off as seen in this screenshot:

enter image description here According to the size, 74BF0000 + D0000 = 74CC0000 but as we can see, kernel32.dll does not map that far. While this is one issue, I also do not understand why IDA Pro freezes up and crashes after iterating around 4791 addresses in past the base which would bring us to 74BF12D2. Here's my script:

import time
NULL = 0
# possible refactor to just take the module object so base and size dont need to be passed in like this?
def get_names(base, size, desired_name):
    print "inside get_names"
    print ("Base: %d Size: %d Desired Name: %s" % (base, size, desired_name))
    global NULL
    current_address = base
    i = 0
    while current_address <= base+size:
        print "Made it into current_address loop "
        i += 1
        print ("interation #: %d" % (i))
        # print hex(current_address) TODO: REMOVE
        if desired_name in Name(current_address):
            print "found %s" % (desired_name)
            return current_address
        time.sleep(0.02)
        current_address = NextHead(current_address)
    print "exiting get_names"
    return NULL

# Enumerate modules
def find_import_routine(the_module, desired_name):
    print "inside find_import routine"
    for m in Modules():
        if the_module.lower() in m.name.lower():
            base = m.base
            size = m.size
            analyze_area(base, base+size)
            begin_text = get_names(base, size, desired_name)
            if begin_text: #check for null
                add_bpt(begin_text,0,BPT_SOFT)
                enable_bpt(begin_text,True)
                continue_process()
                GetDebuggerEvent(WFNE_SUSP,-1)
                #del_bpt(initial_bp_ea)
                return True #return the bp addr??
    print "exiting find_import routine"
    return False
def find_start():
    print "inside find_start routine"
    global NULL
    functions = idautils.Functions()
    for f in functions:
        name = get_func_name(f)
        if name == 'start' or name == '_start' or name =='main' or name == '_main':
            return f
    print "exiting find)start"
    return NULL

def main():
    start_addr = find_start()
    if start_addr:
        idc.add_bpt(start_addr)
        StartDebugger("","","");
        print "after StartDebugger()"
        GetDebuggerEvent(WFNE_SUSP, -1)
        print "after GetDebuggerEvent"
        find_import_routine('kernel32.dll','ExitProcess')
        print "After find_import_routine"
    else:
        print "Could not find a start routine. Exiting." 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Please note that the sleep and print is only for debugging purposes.

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  • Are you putting breakpoints in the .idata segment? That always caused (back in the day) that same behaviour. Jun 10, 2018 at 17:49

1 Answer 1

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Those debug API never well worked for me either, even when I've used them in c++ plugin. Seems like you have to do a lot of Wait() in order to make the engine to process the events.

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  • Do you know the difference between Wait() and GetDebuggerEvent()??
    – the_endian
    Dec 12, 2017 at 19:34
  • Yes I know, I spent a week trying to make it work several years ago and got into reversing IDA to understand where it hangs, and my finding was that there's some conflict between the debugger events and disassembly engine events so it hangs. Good luck finding the real reason. Dec 13, 2017 at 8:51

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