Boomerang decompiler fails - c++

I need to decompile a windows program which the source code was lost for a long time.
I am using boomerang in Windows 7 for this. However, it looks broken, gives this message and quits:
Could not open dynamic loader library Win32BinaryFile.dll (error #998)
Googling about it gives no useful results. Looking in the boomerang source code, it is apparently coming from this:
00137 hModule = LoadLibraryA(libName.c_str());
00138 if(hModule == NULL) {
00139 int err = GetLastError();
00140 fprintf( stderr, "Could not open dynamic loader library %s (error #%d)\n", libName.c_str(), err);
00141 fclose(f);
00142 return NULL;
00143 }
I.e. LoadLibraryA is failing with the status 998.
What could I do to fix that?
Edit, four hours later:
The program that I want to decompile is a work that me and a friend implemented in 2005. The source just gone in the mean time without we seeing that. Now, in 2013, when we searched it, nothing was found. In retrospect, it was probably lost in 2008 or in 2010, two occasions where my computer hardware crashed and I needed to get a new computer (and lost a lot of data with that). We had several backups scattered in several places, but after an exhaustive search, I found nothing.
I know that since boomerang is open source, I could just get its source code and hack it around. However, that sort of task is not what I originally intended to do, since the focus is just to decompile my program and I guess that I am missing something simple, since it can't load the DLL while it is clearly there.
I don't need the exact code back, just a sketch of what were the exact details of the algorithm that were implemented. Having that, I can rewrite the rest again.

Related

reading (not writing) last_write_time gives a file creation error

I'm stumped... it took me a while to track this down.. because I don't have visual C++ IDE installed on the problematic system (it is windows server 2019)... my code works fine with VS 2022 on my laptop (W11 22H2)... anyhow.. I get this exception
Cannot create a file when that file already exists
I tracked it down to this code:
const auto fileTime = fs::last_write_time(p);
apparently this function can also write to the file to modify the time.
but I'm just trying to read it... (I didn't add the arguments necessary to write)
does anyone have any idea why this error might be happening?
https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/filesystem/last_write_time
please note it is highly likely that sometimes the file is actually being written to when I call this code (this code is called in a loop, and so is the file that is being written by another program)

fstream fails to open file

I have a very weird problem. The setup is the following:
Library A uses Library B
Both libraries are installed as shared library independently and A links to B using CMake packages.
When I create an executable that directly links to B, everything works fine.
When I create an executable that links to A however, which is using B, then for some reason my fstream in B fails to open a specific file. I am 100% certain the file exists, is not requiring authorization and is not currently used. The error thrown by strerror(errno) is "No such file or directory".
I really have no clue what might go wrong. This is the code snippet I use for opening:
ifstream f;
f.open(filename.c_str(), ios_base::in|ios::binary);
if (f.fail()) {
std::cout << "Opening Vocabulary failed: " << std::strerror(errno) << std::endl;
return false;
}
I triple checked the path in filename is correct. These are the last resorts I can think of:
Maybe Library A uses another C++ Standard as B, which is why the call to fstream fails?
Maybe filename string is somehow corrupted, even though the path seems to be correct?
Maybe some memory leak corrupts my c_str() command?
Is there anything else that I could check?
Edit: Ah, one thing I forgot: The fstream command is in a templated function in a header file. Maybe this has something to do with it?
Edit2: Here is the stack trace. "ORBVoc.bin" is the file I wanted to open. The only information I get out of this is, it does not exist...though it does exist.
https://www.file-upload.net/download-14359408/strace.log.html
Okay, apparently a reboot was all it takes. Today everything works flawlessly. No permissions, file or line of code was changed. I assume either something went terribly wrong, when my Laptop came back from hibernation. Or it was some pending ubuntu update? I really have no idea. I could swear it was shutdown at least once the past 2-3 days. But jeah, I have no other explanation. Maybe someone smarter can answer this with his glass ball...
Anyway, thanks for the answers, appreciate it! At least I learned about strace $:^)

Visual Studio 2013 Floating Point Support fix?

I have a DLL, which is commercial software, so therefore I cannot show the code here...
I get the error "6002" -floating point support not loaded, but only on some applications.
This dll is hooked to several applications, without problems.
I tried everything that I found on Google, like reinstalling VC++, clean PC, registry, everything.
So my conclusion is that either there is another dll compiled in another version of Visual Studio (2010) and it`s somehow conflicting with my dll ?!
Or, I have some memory leak, which I cannot find.
I use the following functions in my DLL which (I think) is the issue:
sscanf(); // DISABLED IT FOR TEST, BUT STILL GET ERROR
fprintf_s();
DetourTransactionBegin();
DetourUpdateThread(GetCurrentThread());
DisableThreadLibraryCalls(hModule);
DetourRestoreAfterWith();
_beginthreadex();
strtoul();
Example function I use for logging:
void ##SOFTWARE-CLASS##::write_log(char *text)
{
FILE *write_log;
char dateStr [9];
char timeStr [9];
_strdate( dateStr);
_strtime( timeStr );
write_log = fopen("##SOFTWARE-FILE##","a+");
fprintf_s(write_log,"[%s %s] %s \n", dateStr, timeStr, text);
fclose(write_log);
}
Nothing else is used that may cause floating errors...
The dll is hooked properly, I have no warnings, and no errors.
I must mention, that I have created an empty DLL, with a MessageBox, at the first run, I was getting the same error, but after switching to /fp:strict, the error disappeared. So I did the same thing to my project, but the error is still there. I even recoded the whole project, just to see if it fixes the problem, but no.
Please give me advice on how can I solve this problem, as this is the third day that I am testing...
From MSDN : R6002 the document says that a program will only load floating point support if needed. What this means, is that the detoured code is being injected into binaries which did not initialize the floating point subsystem. The solution would be to relink your commercial product without requiring the floating point code, or to relink with an alternative floating point library.
You could try and detect the missing initialization and perform it yourself, but that would have a larger impact on the injected system, and possibly create instabilities.
Use a debugger with the failing executable, and you should be able to get a call stack which identifies where the failure occurs.

Identifying a Programming Language

So I have a software program that for reasons that are beyond this post, I will not include but to put it simply, I'd like to "MOD" the original software. The program is launched from a Windows Application named ViaNet.exe with accompanying DLL files such as ViaNetDll.dll. The Application is given an argument such as ./Statup.cat. There is also a WatchDog process that uses the argument ./App.cat instead of the former.
I was able to locate a log file buried in my Windows/Temp folder for the ViaNet.exe Application. Looking at the log it identifies files such as:
./Utility/base32.atc:_Encode32 line 67
./Utilities.atc:MemFun_:Invoke line 347
./Utilities.atc:_ForEachProperty line 380
./Cluster/ClusterManager.atc:ClusterManager:GetClusterUpdates line 1286
./Cluster/ClusterManager.atc:ClusterManager:StopSync line 505
./Cluster/ClusterManager.atc:ConfigSynchronizer:Update line 1824
Going to those file locations reveal files by those names, but not ending with .atc but instead .cat. The log also indicates some sort of Class, Method and Line # but .cat files are in binary form.
Searching the program folder for any files with the extension .atc reveals three -- What I can assume are uncompiled .cat files -- files. Low and behold, once opened it's obviously some sort of source code -- with copyright headers, lol.
global ConfigFolder, WriteConfigFile, App, ReadConfigFile, CreateAssocArray;
local mgrs = null;
local email = CreateAssocArray( null);
local publicConfig = ReadConfigFile( App.configPath + "\\publicConfig.dat" );
if ( publicConfig != null )
{
mgrs = publicConfig.cluster.shared.clusterGroup[1].managers[1];
local emailInfo = publicConfig.cluster.shared.emailServer;
if (emailInfo != null)
{
if (emailInfo.serverName != "")
{
email.serverName = emailInfo.serverName;
}
if (emailInfo.serverEmailAddress != "")
{
email.serverEmailAddress = emailInfo.serverEmailAddress;
}
if (emailInfo.adminEmailAddress != null)
{
email.adminEmailAddress = emailInfo.adminEmailAddress;
}
}
}
if (mgrs != null)
{
WriteConfigFile( ConfigFolder + "ZoneInfo.dat", mgrs);
}
WriteConfigFile( ConfigFolder + "EmailInfo.dat", email);
So to end this as simply as possible, I'm trying to find out two things. #1 What Programming Language is this? and #2 Can the .cat be decompiled back to .atc. files? -- and vice versa. Looking at the log it would appear that the Application is decoding/decompiling the .cat files already to interpret them verses running them as bytecode/natively. Searching for .atc on Google results in AutoCAD. But looking at the results, shows it to be some sort of palette files, nothing source code related.
It would seem to me that if I can program in this unknown language, let alone, decompile the existing stuff, I might get lucky with modding the software. Thanks in advance for any help and I really really hope someone has an answer for me.
EDIT
So huge news people, I've made quite an interesting discovery. I downloaded a patch from the vendor, it contained a batch file that was executing ViaNet.exe Execute [Patch Script].atc. I quickly discovered that you can use Execute to run both .atc and .cat files equally, same as with no argument. Once knowing this I assumed that there must be various arguments you can try, well after a random stroke of luck, there is one. That being Compile [Script].atc. This argument will compile also any .atc file to .cat. I've compiled the above script for comparison: http://pastebin.com/rg2YM8Q9
So I guess the goal now is to determine if it's possible to decompile said script. So I took a step further and was successful at obtaining C++ pseudo code from the ViaNet.exe and ViaNetDll.dll binaries, this has shed tons of understanding on the proprietary language and it's API they use. From what I can tell each execution is decompiled first then ran thru the interpreter. They also have nicknamed their language ATCL, still no idea what it stands for. While searching the API, I found several debug methods with names like ExecuteFile, ExecuteString, CompileFile, CompileString, InspectFunction and finally DumpObjCode. With the DumpObjCode method I'm able to perform some sort of dump of script files. Dump file for above script: http://pastebin.com/PuCCVMPf
I hope someone can help me find a pattern with the progress I made. I'm trying my best to go over the pseudo code but I don't know C++, so I'm having a really hard time understanding the code. I've tried to seperate what I can identify as being the compile script subroutines but I'm not certain: http://pastebin.com/pwfFCDQa
If someone can give me an idea of what this code snippet is doing and if it looks like I'm on the right path, I'd appreciate it. Thank you in advanced.

Using "rundll32.exe" to access SpeechUX.dll

Good Day,
I have searched the Internet tirelessly trying to find an example of how to start Windows Speech Training from with in my VB.Net Speech Recognition Application.
I have found a couple examples, which I can not get working to save my life.
One such example is on the Visual Studios Fourms:
HERE
this particular example users the "Process.Start" call to try and start the Speech Training Session. However this does not work for me. Here is the exmaple from that thread:
Process.Start("rundll32.exe", "C:\Windows\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll, RunWizard UserTraining")
What happens is I get and error that says:
There was a problem starting
C:\Windows\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll
The specified module could not be found
So I tried creating a shortcut (.lnk) file and thought I could access the DLL this way. My short cut kind of does the same thing. In the short cut I call the "rundll32.exe" with parameters:
C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe "C:\Windows\system32\speech\speechux\SpeechUX.dll" RunWizard UserTraining
Then in my VB.Net application I use the "Process.Start" and try to run the shortcut.
This also gives me the same error. However the shortcut itself will start the SPeech Training session. Weird?!?
So, I then took it one step further, to see if it has something to do with my VB.Net Application and the "Process.Start" Call.
I created a VBScript, and using "Wscript.Shell" I point to the Shortcut.
Running the VBScript calls the Shortcut and low and behold the Speech Training starts!
Great! But...
when I try to run the VBscript from my VB.net Application, I get that error again.
What the heck is going on here?
Your problem likely is that your program is compiled as 32-bit and your OS is 64-bit, and thus, when you try to access "C:\Windows\System32\Speech\SpeechUX\SpeechUX.dll" from your program, you're really accessing "C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Speech\SpeechUX\SpeechUX.dll" which, as rundll32.exe is reporting doesn't exist.
Compile your program as 64-bit instead or try the pseudo directory %SystemRoot%\sysnative.
Also, instead of rundll32.exe, you may want to just run SpeechUXWiz.exe with an argument.
Eg.
private Process StartSpeechMicrophoneTraining()
{
Process process = new Process();
process.StartInfo.FileName = System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.SystemDirectory, "speech\\speechux\\SpeechUXWiz.exe");
process.StartInfo.Arguments = "MicTraining";
process.Start();
return process;
}
private Process StartSpeechUserTraining()
{
Process process = new Process();
process.StartInfo.FileName = System.IO.Path.Combine(Environment.SystemDirectory, "speech\\speechux\\SpeechUXWiz.exe");
process.StartInfo.Arguments = "UserTraining";
process.Start();
return process;
}
Hope that helps.
Read more about Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64
or your problem specifically at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WoW64#Registry_and_file_system
If you are using a 64bit OS and want to access system32 folder you must use the directory alias name, which is "sysnative".
"C:\windows\sysnative" will allow you access to system32 folder and all it's contents.
Honestly, who decided this at Microsoft is just silly!!