dealing with pointers to methods, and calling C++ functions

c++ / delphi package - dll injection and api hooking
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klumsy
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Jul 27, 2004 2:03 pm
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dealing with pointers to methods, and calling C++ functions

Post by klumsy »

i've been working lately on making different algorithms for calling C++ methods using pointers and all manner of things, dealing with normal methods and virtual methods..
just wanna post some of my examples here, and see if anybody likes them (though they are inline assembler examples that can easily be modified to call in memory C++ objects from ASM code in the same process, also maybe people might be able to point out some errors in my logic or understanding. b.t.w these are MSVC++ specific as other compilers probably implement things differently.. one thing to note is i haven't tested/made allowances for classes that use multiple inheritence

first issue is getting a pointer to the method. The folowing inline assembly will do it for virtual and non virtual methods, however it won't do it if you only have an empty "shell interface" definiton of the class (i.e virtual BOOL Shutdown() = 0;

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_asm
{
  mov eax,Test::DoIt;
}
If you just have a 'shell interface' though, that won't compile, and maybe you want to rather get that address from C/C++, or actually maybe you know its a virtual method, and you want to rather get it from the pointer to the instance of the class. well first lets try getting it with C++ code..
first thing you need to do is use a method pointer..

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//here is what the method actually looks like for reference
virtual long DoIt(long x);
...
// and now we need to declare a pointer to a method
long (Test::*pfn2)(long x);  //method pointer
// and now set the method pointer.
pfn2 = &Test::DoIt;
// now do the impossible, cast a method pointer as a function pointer
void * ptr = *((void **)&pfn2 );
now we have a pointer to a method (but we can't actually just use that as a function pointer because of difference in calling convention. b.t.w if the function pointer is pointing to a nonvirtual method the address is the actual address of the method , however if its a virtual method.. its a pointer to a stub, that looks up the instance, and calls an entry in the virtual table (calling either this address of the actual address will both work.)
that stub always (as far as i've seen) looks like this

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//00401EF0 8B 01            mov         eax,dword ptr [ecx] 
//00401EF2 FF 60 04         jmp         dword ptr [eax+4] 
the only difference between each time, is the +4 or the 5th byte which is an index into the virtual table..
so i've this routine here that call be called on the address we got from the method pointer to see if it points to a virtual or non virtual method

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static BOOL ismethodptrvirtual(void * methodptr)
	{
		BOOL returnval;
		_asm
		{
			mov eax,methodptr;
			mov ebx,[eax]
			mov eax,TRUE
			cmp ebx,60FF018Bh			
			je skip
			mov eax,FALSE
			skip:
			mov returnval,eax
		}		
		return returnval;
	}
the next thing is maybe we already know the virtual table index (quite easy to calculate by looking at the class definition since msvc++ puts everything in the order it was declared, also you can altneratively do
myobj->doit(1); in a test app, and see the Assembly that msvc++ produces (or debug the app to see it).also the offset is goign to be DWORD aligned so first method be at offset 4, 2nd at offset 8 etc..
anyhow i made this function to go inside the virtual table and get the adddress of a virtual method based on the instance and offset.

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static PVOID virtualaddress(void* thisptr,int methodoffset)
	{
		PVOID returnval;		
		_asm
		{
			mov eax,thisptr;
			mov eax,[eax] ; //point to the start of virtualtable
			mov ebx,methodoffset;
			mov eax,[eax+ebx*4]
			mov returnval,eax
		}
		return returnval;
	}
now that we can get the address of a method in many different ways.. How about calling this method..
nonstaTIC C++ methods use the THISCALL calling convention which is basically the STDCALL (called method cleans up the stack) with the hidden 'this' instance pointer also being sent, with MSVC++ the 'this' pointer is passed in ECX register.. and all the parameters like STDCALL are pushed on the the stack in right to left order. (but since the stack goes downwards, basically in memory in left to right order ) so if you want to call
this particular method manually you could do.. the return value is normally returned in eax, but 8 bit structures are returned in eax:edx, and floats are returned in ST0 - so will have to be accessed seperately, not covered in this article

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// to do the equivilant of the following
// int mine = obj1.doIt(43);
//where you allready have the pointer to doIt in PVOID doitptr;
_asm
{
  push 43
  mov ecx,obj1
  call [doitptr]
  mov mine,eax
}
however we want to make a more generic technique to call functions.. so this is the solution..
first this is how it is called.

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//here is the definition of the method used in this example
virtual	BOOL	Startup(HWND hPrimaryWnd, DWORD modeFlags);
// and i know that it is the first method in the virtual table, and we have an instance of this class called
//m_pEngine
//here is the structure containing the parameters to pass to the function
struct 
	{
		HWND  wndhandle;
		DWORD c;
	} mystruct = {tmphwnd,VJEMODE_PRESENTATION};
//use the virtualaddress method we have already covered to get the address from the instance.
address = (DWORD) thiscall::virtualaddress(m_pEngine,1);
//use the my callmethod passing in the instance of the object, the adress, the structure containing 
//the arguments for the function and the size of the arugments (structure)
thiscall::callmethod(m_pEngine,address,(const void*)&mystruct,sizeof(mystruct));
and that is all. now here the actual code for callmethod. basically we copy the structure to the stack (as if we had pushed the parmeters backwards), put the instance of the object into ECX and call the address. and return what is returned in EAX

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static DWORD callmethod(void* thisptr, DWORD address,const void* arguments,size_t argsize)
	{
	DWORD returnval;               
	_asm
	{
        mov   ecx, argsize    // get size of arguments for the function			    
        sub   esp, ecx         // adjust the stack pointer to give room to copy these arguments there
        shr   ecx, 2            // divide by 4 (because we'll copy DWORDS over at a time)
        mov   esi, arguments   // get the pointer to the start of the arguments buffer (Source)		
        mov   edi, esp         // start of destination stack frame (destination)
        rep   movsd            // copy arugments to stack frame
        mov   ecx, thisptr     // THISCALL passes "this" in ecx
        call  [address]        // call the function 
        mov   returnval, eax   // return value returns in eax, so we better save it
    }
	return returnval;
} 
also if we are just calling a virtual method, and we know the offset, i combined my getvirtualaddress method with the one here to produce this

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static DWORD callvirtualmethod(void *thisptr,int methodoffset,const void* arguments,size_t argsize)
	{
		DWORD returnval;    
		_asm
	{
        mov   ecx, argsize      // get size of arguments for the function		
	    sub   esp, ecx          // adjust the stack pointer to give room to copy these arguments there
		shr   ecx,2			    // divide by 4 (because we'll copy DWORDS over at a time)
		mov   esi, arguments    // get the pointer to the start of the arguments buffer (Source)
        mov   edi, esp          // start of destination stack frame (destination)
		rep   movsd             // copy arugments to stack frame
		mov	  eax, thisptr      // get the "this" pointer 
		mov   eax, [eax] 	    // point to the start of virtualtable
		mov   ebx, methodoffset // offset into the virtualtable
        mov   ecx, thisptr	    // THISCALL passes "this" in ecx
		call  [eax+ebx*4]       // call the function (the address of virtualtable+offset*4)
        mov   returnval, eax    // return value returns in eax, so we better save it
    }
	return returnval;

	}
which enables you do do the following

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//instead of the following used in the last example 
address = (DWORD) thiscall::virtualaddress(m_pEngine,1);
thiscall::callmethod(m_pEngine,address,(const void*)&mystruct,sizeof(mystruct));
//you can just do this directly
thiscall::callvirtualmethod(m_pEngine,1,(const void*)&mystruct,sizeof(mystruct));
which is really useful, but often you might get the pointer directly using other methods so "callmethod" itself is useful. There is one more technique i have done so far for HOOKing methods, it is absolutely essential. Early on in the article i showed getting an address to a method pointer. I also pointed out that if that method pointer points to a virtual method, it doesn't point directly to it, but rather to some stub code that looks up the actual address from the virtual table based on an offset specified in the stub code as below

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//00401EF0 8B 01            mov         eax,dword ptr [ecx] 
//00401EF2 FF 60 04         jmp         dword ptr [eax+4] 
for hooking purposes there isn't enough bytes (6) for me to install a safe hook, and also if i hooked this function then it would only hook calls to the method that were called through a method pointer rather that any other way. so i made a function that checks the address, and if it starts with the faith bytes 60FF018B as above it knows its this stub, and then it grabs the 5th byte as the offset, and then manually looks up the vtable itself and gets the actual address of the function. that code is below. (it has alot of comments in this one)

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static PVOID dereferencemethodptr(void* thisptr,void * methodptr)
	{
		PVOID returnval;
		//issues if size of pointer is more than 4 bytes (multiple inheritance it might be different)
		//if a method pointer points to a nonstatic (but not virtual) function, then it points directly
		//to that function
		//if it points to a nonstatic VIRTUAL function, then it points to a stub that C++ creates that looks 
		//the the following
		//00401EF0 8B 01            mov         eax,dword ptr [ecx] 
        //00401EF2 FF 60 04         jmp         dword ptr [eax+4] 
		//as far as i've seen , irregardless of anything i've seen so far , or compiler optomisation options
		//it seems to be exactly the same as above, other than the last byte (the +4) which is actually the information
		//we need to be able to look up the function in the vtable.. so we can read it directly from this code.
		//so first we check to see if the first 4 bytes are 8b01FF60 (or is it 60FF018B?) and if it is grab the 
		//address + 4.. otherwise just treat the address as what it is.
		_asm
		{
		mov eax,methodptr;
		mov ebx,[eax]
		cmp ebx,60FF018Bh
		jne skip
		//if its a virtual method
		xor ebx,ebx
	    mov bl,byte ptr [eax + 4]; //grab the 5th byte which is the +4 (or +whatever) offset in the virtual table
		mov eax,thisptr; //ptr to the instance of the class
		mov eax,[eax] ;//start of virtual table
		mov eax,[eax+ebx];//get the address of the method from getting it from the virtual table with offset
		skip:
		mov returnval,eax
		}
	return returnval;	
	 
	}
madshi
Site Admin
Posts: 10753
Joined: Sun Mar 21, 2004 5:25 pm

Post by madshi »

Hey, quite cool - thanks very much!! I'm sure it will be very useful for C++ programmers.

:D
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