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Unhiding threads from the debugger

 
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Fri Mar 20, 2015 1:16 pm    Post subject: Unhiding threads from the debugger This post has 1 review(s) Reply with quote

Some games protect themselves by hiding certain threads from the debugger.
When that happens, and a breakpoint is hit, the debugger won't receive the breakpoint exception and can't handle it. Therefore, the exception goes unhandled, and if the game doesn't handle it (it could but most games won't) the whole application will terminate.

One often used way to bypass this issue, is to hook the creation of the game and prevent it from hiding in the first place. Or using a different way of debugging. But today I'll show you an 'easy' to use method to unhide such threads after they have been hidden.

This involves knowing the layout of the EThread of the windows version you're on. More specifically, the location of the CrossThreadFlags field, and possible the bit position of HideFromDebugger. (which is usually bit 2 from what i've seen)

For this example i'll go with windows 7 build 6.1.7601. In here bit 2 of offset 0x450 of the EThread structure contains the flag for hidefromdebugger

Tip for other operating systems, or a way to automate the lookup: the exported function PsIsThreadTerminating ( in ce known under the exported symbol kernel_PsIsThreadTerminating ) references that offset. So just disassemble it to get the offset


Code:


local FLAGS_OFFSET=0x450  --adjust this to your windows version

--first we enable kernelmode access
dbk_initialize()
dbk_useKernelmodeOpenProcess()
dbk_useKernelmodeProcessMemoryAccess()

--then reopen the process in case it was opened with usermode access:
openProcess(getOpenedProcessID()) --reopen with kernel access

--now create a list of threads
local list=createStringlist()
getThreadlist(list)  --fills a stringlist with the threadid's

local i
for i=0, list.count-1 do
  local tid=tonumber('0x'..list[i])

  --for every thread we get the EThread address
  local PEThread=dbk_getPEThread(tid)
  local PEThread_Flags=PEThread+FLAGS_OFFSET

  --then we check if the hidefromdebugger bit is set
  local flags=readBytes(PEThread_Flags,1)
  if bAnd(flags,4)==4 then --test bit 4 (adjust if your windows has it at a different position)
    --and if so, we remove that bit
    print("Thread "..list[i].." is hiding from the debugger. Unhiding it")
    flags=bAnd(flags,0xfb) --unset bit 4
    writeBytes(PEThread_Flags, flags)
  end

end

--some cleanup
list.destroy()
print("Done") --and done


now when this lua script gets executed it will go through all the threads of the target process, and unset the hidefromdebugger flag where it's present

tips for enhancement: As I mentioned, you can disassemble kernel_PsIsSystemThread to get the offset, and alternatively, you could call NtSetInformationThread(threadhandle, ThreadHideFromDebugger(17), NULL, 0);
on multiple threads/processes and see if you can pinpoint the flags register that way by looking at the differences(keep in mind, eflags changes constantly, so filter out the fields that change when the field hasn't changed, but that's basic me scanning)
Or you could keep a database of windows build numbers and offsets

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Last edited by Dark Byte on Tue Mar 01, 2016 4:11 pm; edited 1 time in total
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flarn2006
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's interesting, why is there even an OS-provided flag to hide threads from debuggers in the first place? Confused
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Probably when the OS injects a debugger thread into the target process. So when it freezes on a breakpoint the debugger can still query data about the target from inside the target
It's something I wanted to do myself for a while (the mono data collector then doesn't have to shut down when debugging is in progress)

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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

in windows 10 (the current bad build) the offset is 6bc
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Sadfaffel
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i dont understand:/
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STN
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sadfaffel wrote:
i dont understand:/


Then it doesn't concern you. Still, thanks for bumping this thread because this is interesting. Which games have you noticed this on Dark Byte ?.

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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2015 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i've seen this thread hiding in a couple of steam games.
not all, but a few where the windows debugger interface would crash the game had their main thread hidden

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Hatschi
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 6:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Is it possible to achieve the same without kernel mode driver, possibly using Win API?
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Dark Byte
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 6:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No, not unless you use a different kind of debugging method, like the VEH debug method.
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Hatschi
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 03, 2017 7:39 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hm I see, the address your script gaves me is negative. I tried using Process Explorer which gives me the start address of the thread too but it's positive and completely different.. what a shame.
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 4:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Dark Byte wrote:
i've seen this thread hiding in a couple of steam games.
not all, but a few where the windows debugger interface would crash the game had their main thread hidden


Steams homebrew DRM (referred to as SteamStub) uses typical NtSetInformationThread to hide the main thread while doing it's unpacking process at game launch. (Done in the payload DLL it manually maps into memory named SteamDRMP.dll.)

I posted a small write up on it here:
http://atom0s.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=52

My unpacker handles removing the DRM here:
https://github.com/atom0s/Steamless

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Hatschi
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 3:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've seen your great work before. In your thread you mentioned blocking NTSetInformationThread call but this is something for "starting the game under a debugger". But I wonder if this can be done "on the fly" while the target is already running. But from what I've read so far it seems to be impossible without a kernel driver to unreveal a hidden thread, isn't it ?!
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PostPosted: Thu Apr 06, 2017 4:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

yup. Only a kernelmode driver can reset the HideFromDebugger flag back to 0. (it's located in kernelmode and NtSetInformationThread can only set it to true, not false)
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