PE Self Injection Not Working

Question

I'm working on different PE Injection technique. I want to inject PE file into virtual memory of the current executable. After that, I want to execute the injected PE file, I wrote an injection code, but my method is not working.

DOS header and NT header parse correctly, I write correctly sections and create new thread on the entrypoint of the .text section, but the thread is not working. What is the problem here?

#include <iostream>
#include <windows.h>

int main()
{
    DWORD* ImageBase;
    void* pImageBase;
    IMAGE_NT_HEADERS* NTHeader;
    IMAGE_DOS_HEADER* DOSHeader;
    IMAGE_NT_HEADERS* mem_NTHeader;
    IMAGE_DOS_HEADER* mem_DOSHeader;
    IMAGE_SECTION_HEADER* SecHeader;
    unsigned char memory_pe[] = { 0x4D, 0x5A, 0x90, 0x00, 0x03, 0x00, ........} // This is binary of PE file.
    DOSHeader = PIMAGE_DOS_HEADER(memory_pe);
    NTHeader = PIMAGE_NT_HEADERS(DWORD(memory_pe) + DOSHeader->e_lfanew);
    pImageBase = VirtualAlloc(NULL, NTHeader->OptionalHeader.SizeOfImage, 0x3000, PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE);
    memcpy(pImageBase, memory_pe, NTHeader->OptionalHeader.SizeOfHeaders);
    for (int i = 0; i < NTHeader->FileHeader.NumberOfSections; i++) {
        SecHeader = (PIMAGE_SECTION_HEADER)(DWORD(memory_pe) + DOSHeader->e_lfanew + 248 + (i * 40));
        memcpy(LPVOID(DWORD(pImageBase) + SecHeader->VirtualAddress), LPVOID(DWORD(memory_pe) + SecHeader->PointerToRawData), SecHeader->SizeOfRawData);
    }
    mem_DOSHeader = PIMAGE_DOS_HEADER(pImageBase);
    mem_NTHeader = PIMAGE_NT_HEADERS(DWORD(pImageBase) + mem_DOSHeader->e_lfanew);
    CreateThread(NULL, 0, (LPTHREAD_START_ROUTINE)(DWORD(pImageBase) + mem_NTHeader->OptionalHeader.BaseOfCode), NULL, 0, NULL);
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

Loading and successfully running code associated with an arbitrary PE may require some additional steps e.g. relocation. Consider converting the EXE into a DLL like this or this so that you can use Windows APIs to load the code for you.