45 ESIL
ESIL stands for ‘Evaluable Strings Intermediate Language’. It aims to describe a Forth-like representation for every target CPU opcode semantics. ESIL representations can be evaluated (interpreted) in order to emulate individual instructions. Each command of an ESIL expression is separated by a comma. Its virtual machine can be described as this:
while ((word=haveCommand())) {
if (word.isOperator()) {
esilOperators[word](esil);
} else {
esil.push (word);
}
nextCommand();
}As we can see ESIL uses a stack-based interpreter similar to what is commonly used for calculators. You have two categories of inputs: values and operators. A value simply gets pushed on the stack, an operator then pops values (its arguments if you will) off the stack, performs its operation and pushes its results (if any) back on. We can think of ESIL as a post-fix notation of the operations we want to do.
So let’s see an example:
4,esp,-=,ebp,esp,=[4]Can you guess what this is? If we take this post-fix notation and transform it back to in-fix we get
esp -= 4
4bytes(dword) [esp] = ebpWe can see that this corresponds to the x86 instruction push ebp! Isn’t that cool? The aim is to be able to express most of the common operations performed by CPUs, like binary arithmetic operations, memory loads and stores, processing syscalls. This way if we can transform the instructions to ESIL we can see what a program does while it is running even for the most cryptic architectures you definitely don’t have a device to debug on for.
45.1 Using ESIL
rizin’s visual mode is great to inspect the ESIL evaluations.
There are 3 environment variables that are important for watching what a program does:
[0x00000000]> e emu.str=trueasm.emu tells rizin if you want ESIL information to be displayed. If it is set to true, you will see comments appear to the right of your disassembly that tell you how the contents of registers and memory addresses are changed by the current instruction. For example, if you have an instruction that subtracts a value from a register it tells you what the value was before and what it becomes after. This is super useful so you don’t have to sit there yourself and track which value goes where.
One problem with this is that it is a lot of information to take in at once and sometimes you simply don’t need it. rizin has a nice compromise for this. That is what the emu.str variable is for (asm.emustr on <= 2.2). Instead of this super verbose output with every register value, this only adds really useful information to the output, e.g., strings that are found at addresses a program uses or whether a jump is likely to be taken or not.
The third important variable is asm.esil. This switches your disassembly to no longer show you the actual disassembled instructions, but instead now shows you corresponding ESIL expressions that describe what the instruction does. So if you want to take a look at how instructions are expressed in ESIL simply set “asm.esil” to true.
[0x00000000]> e asm.esil=trueIn visual mode you can also toggle this by simply typing O.
45.2 ESIL Commands
- “ae” : Evaluate ESIL expression.
[0x00000000]> "ae 1,1,+"
0x2
[0x00000000]>- “aes” : ESIL Step.
[0x00000000]> aes
[0x00000000]>10aes- “aeso” : ESIL Step Over.
[0x00000000]> aeso
[0x00000000]>10aeso- “aesu” : ESIL Step Until.
[0x00001000]> aesu 0x1035
ADDR BREAK
[0x00001019]>- “ar” : Show/modify ESIL registry.
[0x00001ec7]> ar r_00 = 0x1035
[0x00001ec7]> ar r_00
0x00001035
[0x00001019]>45.2.1 ESIL Instruction Set
Here is the complete instruction set used by the ESIL VM:
| ESIL Opcode | Operands | Name | Operation | example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRAP | src | Trap | Trap signal | |
| \(** | src | Syscall | syscall | **\)$ | src | Instruction address | Get address of current instruction stack=instruction address |
|
| == | src,dst | Compare | stack = (dst == src) ; update_eflags(dst - src) |
|
| < | src,dst | Smaller (signed comparison) | stack = (dst < src) ; update_eflags(dst - src) |
[0x0000000]> “ae 1,5,<” 0x0 > “ae 5,5” 0x0” |
| <= | src,dst | Smaller or Equal (signed comparison) | stack = (dst <= src) ; update_eflags(dst - src) |
[0x0000000]> “ae 1,5,<” 0x0 > “ae 5,5” 0x1” |
| > | src,dst | Bigger (signed comparison) | stack = (dst > src) ; update_eflags(dst - src) |
> “ae 1,5,>” 0x1 > “ae 5,5,>” 0x0 |
| >= | src,dst | Bigger or Equal (signed comparison) | stack = (dst >= src) ; update_eflags(dst - src) |
> “ae 1,5,>=” 0x1 > “ae 5,5,>=” 0x1 |
| << | src,dst | Shift Left | stack = dst << src | > “ae 1,1,<<” 0x2 > “ae 2,1,<<” 0x4 |
| >> | src,dst | Shift Right | stack = dst >> src | > “ae 1,4,>>” 0x2 > “ae 2,4,>>” 0x1 |
| <<< | src,dst | Rotate Left | stack=dst ROL src | > “ae 31,1,<<<” 0x80000000 > “ae 32,1,<<<” 0x1 |
| >>> | src,dst | Rotate Right | stack=dst ROR src | > “ae 1,1,>>>” 0x80000000 > “ae 32,1,>>>” 0x1 |
| & | src,dst | AND | stack = dst & src | > “ae 1,1,&” 0x1 > “ae 1,0,&” 0x0 > “ae 0,1,&” 0x0 > “ae 0,0,&” 0x0 |
| | | src,dst | OR | stack = dst | src | > “ae 1,1,|” 0x1 > “ae 1,0,|” 0x1 > “ae 0,1,|” 0x1 > “ae 0,0,|” 0x0 |
| ^ | src,dst | XOR | stack = dst ^src | > “ae 1,1,^” 0x0 > “ae 1,0,^” 0x1 > “ae 0,1,^” 0x1 > “ae 0,0,^” 0x0 |
| + | src,dst | ADD | stack = dst + src | > “ae 3,4,+” 0x7 > “ae 5,5,+” 0xa |
| - | src,dst | SUB | stack = dst - src | > “ae 3,4,-” 0x1 > “ae 5,5,-” 0x0 > “ae 4,3,-” 0xffffffffffffffff |
| * | src,dst | MUL | stack = dst * src | > “ae 3,4,*” 0xc > “ae 5,5,*” 0x19 |
| / | src,dst | DIV | stack = dst / src | > “ae 2,4,/” 0x2 > “ae 5,5,/” 0x1 > “ae 5,9,/” 0x1 |
| % | src,dst | MOD | stack = dst % src | > “ae 2,4,%” 0x0 > “ae 5,5,%” 0x0 > “ae 5,9,%” 0x4 |
| ~ | bits,src | SIGNEXT | stack = src sign extended | > “ae 8,0x80,~” 0xffffffffffffff80 |
| ~/ | src,dst | SIGNED DIV | stack = dst / src (signed) | > “ae 2,-4,~/” 0xfffffffffffffffe |
| ~% | src,dst | SIGNED MOD | stack = dst % src (signed) | > “ae 2,-5,~%” 0xffffffffffffffff |
| ! | src | NEG | stack = !!!src | > “ae 1,!” 0x0 > “ae 4,!” 0x0 > “ae 0,!” 0x1 |
| ++ | src | INC | stack = src++ | > ar r_00=0;ar r_00 0x00000000 > “ae r_00,++” 0x1 > ar r_00 0x00000000 > “ae 1,++” 0x2 |
| – | src | DEC | stack = src– | > ar r_00=5;ar r_00 0x00000005 > “ae r_00,–” 0x4 > ar r_00 0x00000005 > “ae 5,–” 0x4 |
| = | src,reg | EQU | reg = src | > “ae 3,r_00,=” > aer r_00 0x00000003 > “ae r_00,r_01,=” > aer r_01 0x00000003 |
| += | src,reg | ADD eq | reg = reg + src | > ar r_01=5;ar r_00=0;ar r_00 0x00000000 > “ae r_01,r_00,+=” > ar r_00 0x00000005 > “ae 5,r_00,+=” > ar r_00 0x0000000a |
| -= | src,reg | SUB eq | reg = reg - src | > “ae r_01,r_00,-=” > ar r_00 0x00000004 > “ae 3,r_00,-=” > ar r_00 0x00000001 |
| *= | src,reg | MUL eq | reg = reg * src | > ar r_01=3;ar r_00=5;ar r_00 0x00000005 > “ae r_01,r_00,*=” > ar r_00 0x0000000f > “ae 2,r_00,*=” > ar r_00 0x0000001e |
| /= | src,reg | DIV eq | reg = reg / src | > ar r_01=3;ar r_00=6;ar r_00 0x00000006 > “ae r_01,r_00,/=” > ar r_00 0x00000002 > “ae 1,r_00,/=” > ar r_00 0x00000002 |
| %= | src,reg | MOD eq | reg = reg % src | > ar r_01=3;ar r_00=7;ar r_00 0x00000007 > “ae r_01,r_00,%=” > ar r_00 0x00000001 > ar r_00=9;ar r_00 0x00000009 > “ae 5,r_00,%=” > ar r_00 0x00000004 |
| <<= | src,reg | Shift Left eq | reg = reg << src | > ar r_00=1;ar r_01=1;ar r_01 0x00000001 > “ae r_00,r_01,<<=” > ar r_01 0x00000002 > “ae 2,r_01,<<=” > ar r_01 0x00000008 |
| >>= | src,reg | Shift Right eq | reg = reg << src | > ar r_00=1;ar r_01=8;ar r_01 0x00000008 > “ae r_00,r_01,>>=” > ar r_01 0x00000004 > “ae 2,r_01,>>=” > ar r_01 0x00000001 |
| &= | src,reg | AND eq | reg = reg & src | > ar r_00=2;ar r_01=6;ar r_01 0x00000006 > “ae r_00,r_01,&=” > ar r_01 0x00000002 > “ae 2,r_01,&=” > ar r_01 0x00000002 > “ae 1,r_01,&=” > ar r_01 0x00000000 |
| |= | src,reg | OR eq | reg = reg | src | > ar r_00=2;ar r_01=1;ar r_01 0x00000001 > “ae r_00,r_01,|=” > ar r_01 0x00000003 > “ae 4,r_01,|=” > ar r_01 0x00000007 |
| ^= | src,reg | XOR eq | reg = reg ^ src | > ar r_00=2;ar r_01=0xab;ar r_01 0x000000ab > “ae r_00,r_01,^=” > ar r_01 0x000000a9 > “ae 2,r_01,^=” > ar r_01 0x000000ab |
| ++= | reg | INC eq | reg = reg + 1 | > ar r_00=4;ar r_00 0x00000004 > “ae r_00,++=” > ar r_00 0x00000005 |
| –= | reg | DEC eq | reg = reg - 1 | > ar r_00=4;ar r_00 0x00000004 > “ae r_00,–=” > ar r_00 0x00000003 |
| != | reg | NOT eq | reg = !reg | > ar r_00=4;ar r_00 0x00000004 > “ae r_00,!=” > ar r_00 0x00000000 > “ae r_00,!=” > ar r_00 0x00000001 |
| — | — | — | — | ———————————————- |
| =[] =[*] =[1] =[2] =[4] =[8] |
src,dst | poke | *dst=src | > “ae 0xdeadbeef,0x10000,=[4],” > pxw 4@0x10000 0x00010000 0xdeadbeef …. > “ae 0x0,0x10000,=[4],” > pxw 4@0x10000 0x00010000 0x00000000 |
| [] [*] [1] [2] [4] [8] |
src | peek | stack=*src | > w test@0x10000 > “ae 0x10000,[4],” 0x74736574 > ar r_00=0x10000 > “ae r_00,[4],” 0x74736574 |
| |=[] |=[1] |=[2] |=[4] |=[8] |
reg | nombre | code | > > |
| SWAP | Swap | Swap two top elements | SWAP | |
| PICK | n | Pick | Pick nth element from the top of the stack |
2,PICK |
| RPICK | m | Reverse Pick | Pick nth element from the base of the stack |
0,RPICK |
| DUP | Duplicate | Duplicate top element in stack | DUP | |
| NUM | Numeric | If top element is a reference (register name, label, etc), dereference it and push its real value |
NUM | |
| CLEAR | Clear | Clear stack | CLEAR | |
| BREAK | Break | Stops ESIL emulation | BREAK | |
| GOTO | n | Goto | Jumps to Nth ESIL word | GOTO 5 |
| TODO | To Do | Stops execution (reason: ESIL expression not completed) |
TODO |
45.2.2 ESIL Flags
ESIL VM has an internal state flags that are read-only and can be used to export those values to the underlying target CPU flags. It is because the ESIL VM always calculates all flag changes, while target CPUs only update flags under certain conditions or at specific instructions.
Internal flags are prefixed with $ character.
z - zero flag, only set if the result of an operation is 0
b - borrow, this requires to specify from which bit (example: $b4 - checks if borrow from bit 4)
c - carry, same like above (example: $c7 - checks if carry from bit 7)
o - overflow
p - parity
r - regsize ( asm.bits/8 )
s - sign
ds - delay slot state
jt - jump target
js - jump target set
[0-9]* - Used to set flags and registers without having any side effects,
i.e. setting esil_cur, esil_old and esil_lastsz.
(example: "$0,of,=" to reset the overflow flag)45.3 Syntax and Commands
A target opcode is translated into a comma separated list of ESIL expressions.
xor eax, eax -> 0,eax,=,1,zf,=Memory access is defined by brackets operation:
mov eax, [0x80480] -> 0x80480,[],eax,=Default operand size is determined by size of operation destination.
movb $0, 0x80480 -> 0,0x80480,=[1]The ? operator uses the value of its argument to decide whether to evaluate the expression in curly braces.
- Is the value zero? -> Skip it.
- Is the value non-zero? -> Evaluate it.
cmp eax, 123 -> 123,eax,==,$z,zf,=
jz eax -> zf,?{,eax,eip,=,}If you want to run several expressions under a conditional, put them in curly braces:
zf,?{,eip,esp,=[],eax,eip,=,$r,esp,-=,}Whitespaces, newlines and other chars are ignored. So the first thing when processing a ESIL program is to remove spaces:
esil = r_str_replace (esil, " ", "", R_TRUE);Syscalls need special treatment. They are indicated by ‘$’ at the beginning of an expression. You can pass an optional numeric value to specify a number of syscall. An ESIL emulator must handle syscalls. See (r_esil_syscall).
45.4 Arguments Order for Non-associative Operations
As discussed on IRC, the current implementation works like this:
a,b,- b - a
a,b,/= b /= aThis approach is more readable, but it is less stack-friendly.
45.4.1 Special Instructions
NOPs are represented as empty strings. As it was said previously, syscalls are marked by ‘\(' command. For example, '0x80,\)’. It delegates emulation from the ESIL machine to a callback which implements syscalls for a specific OS/kernel.
Traps are implemented with the TRAP command. They are used to throw exceptions for invalid instructions, division by zero, memory read error, or any other needed by specific architectures.
45.4.2 Quick Analysis
Here is a list of some quick checks to retrieve information from an ESIL string. Relevant information will be probably found in the first expression of the list.
indexOf('[') -> have memory references
indexOf("=[") -> write in memory
indexOf("pc,=") -> modifies program counter (branch, jump, call)
indexOf("sp,=") -> modifies the stack (what if we found sp+= or sp-=?)
indexOf("=") -> retrieve src and dst
indexOf(":") -> unknown esil, raw opcode ahead
indexOf("$") -> accesses internal esil vm flags ex: $z
indexOf("$") -> syscall ex: 1,$
indexOf("TRAP") -> can trap
indexOf('++') -> has iterator
indexOf('--') -> count to zero
indexOf("?{") -> conditional
equalsTo("") -> empty string, aka nop (wrong, if we append pc+=x)Common operations: * Check dstreg * Check srcreg * Get destination * Is jump * Is conditional * Evaluate * Is syscall
45.4.3 CPU Flags
CPU flags are usually defined as single bit registers in the RReg profile. They are sometimes found under the ‘flg’ register type.
45.4.4 Variables
Properties of the VM variables:
They have no predefined bit width. This way it should be easy to extend them to 128, 256 and 512 bits later, e.g. for MMX, SSE, AVX, Neon SIMD.
There can be unbound number of variables. It is done for SSA-form compatibility.
Register names have no specific syntax. They are just strings.
Numbers can be specified in any base supported by RNum (dec, hex, oct, binary …).
Each ESIL backend should have an associated RReg profile to describe the ESIL register specs.
45.4.5 Bit Arrays
What to do with them? What about bit arithmetic if use variables instead of registers?
45.4.6 Arithmetic
- ADD (“+”)
- MUL (“*”)
- SUB (“-”)
- DIV (“/”)
- MOD (“%”)
45.4.7 Bit Arithmetic
- AND “&”
- OR “|”
- XOR “^”
- SHL “<<”
- SHR “>>”
- ROL “<<<”
- ROR “>>>”
- NEG “!”
45.4.8 Floating Point Unit Support
At the moment of this writing, ESIL does not yet support FPU. But you can implement support for unsupported instructions using rz-pipe. Eventually we will get proper support for multimedia and floating point.
45.4.9 Handling x86 REP Prefix in ESIL
ESIL specifies that the parsing control-flow commands must be uppercase. Bear in mind that some architectures have uppercase register names. The corresponding register profile should take care not to reuse any of the following:
3,SKIP - skip N instructions. used to make relative forward GOTOs
3,GOTO - goto instruction 3
LOOP - alias for 0,GOTO
BREAK - stop evaluating the expression
STACK - dump stack contents to screen
CLEAR - clear stack45.4.9.1 Usage Example:
rep cmpsb
cx,!,?{,BREAK,},esi,[1],edi,[1],==,?{,BREAK,},esi,++,edi,++,cx,--,0,GOTO45.4.10 Unimplemented/Unhandled Instructions
Those are expressed with the ‘TODO’ command. They act as a ‘BREAK’, but displays a warning message describing that an instruction is not implemented and will not be emulated. For example:
fmulp ST(1), ST(0) => TODO,fmulp ST(1),ST(0)45.4.11 ESIL Disassembly Example:
[0x1000010f8]> e asm.esil=true
[0x1000010f8]> pd $r @ entry0
0x1000010f8 55 8,rsp,-=,rbp,rsp,=[8]
0x1000010f9 4889e5 rsp,rbp,=
0x1000010fc 4883c768 104,rdi,+=
0x100001100 4883c668 104,rsi,+=
0x100001104 5d rsp,[8],rbp,=,8,rsp,+=
0x100001105 e950350000 0x465a,rip,= ;[1]
0x10000110a 55 8,rsp,-=,rbp,rsp,=[8]
0x10000110b 4889e5 rsp,rbp,=
0x10000110e 488d4668 rsi,104,+,rax,=
0x100001112 488d7768 rdi,104,+,rsi,=
0x100001116 4889c7 rax,rdi,=
0x100001119 5d rsp,[8],rbp,=,8,rsp,+=
0x10000111a e93b350000 0x465a,rip,= ;[1]
0x10000111f 55 8,rsp,-=,rbp,rsp,=[8]
0x100001120 4889e5 rsp,rbp,=
0x100001123 488b4f60 rdi,96,+,[8],rcx,=
0x100001127 4c8b4130 rcx,48,+,[8],r8,=
0x10000112b 488b5660 rsi,96,+,[8],rdx,=
0x10000112f b801000000 1,eax,=
0x100001134 4c394230 rdx,48,+,[8],r8,==,cz,?=
0x100001138 7f1a sf,of,!,^,zf,!,&,?{,0x1154,rip,=,} ;[2]
0x10000113a 7d07 of,!,sf,^,?{,0x1143,rip,} ;[3]
0x10000113c b8ffffffff 0xffffffff,eax,= ; 0xffffffff
0x100001141 eb11 0x1154,rip,= ;[2]
0x100001143 488b4938 rcx,56,+,[8],rcx,=
0x100001147 48394a38 rdx,56,+,[8],rcx,==,cz,?=45.4.12 Introspection
To ease ESIL parsing we should have a way to express introspection expressions to extract the data that we want. For example, we may want to get the target address of a jump. The parser for ESIL expressions should offer an API to make it possible to extract information by analyzing the expressions easily.
> ao~esil,opcode
opcode: jmp 0x10000465a
esil: 0x10000465a,rip,=We need a way to retrieve the numeric value of ‘rip’. This is a very simple example, but there are more complex, like conditional ones. We need expressions to be able to get:
- opcode type
- destination of a jump
- condition depends on
- all regs modified (write)
- all regs accessed (read)
45.4.13 API HOOKS
It is important for emulation to be able to setup hooks in the parser, so we can extend it to implement analysis without having to change it again and again. That is, every time an operation is about to be executed, a user hook is called. It can be used for example to determine if RIP is going to change, or if the instruction updates the stack. Later, we can split that callback into several ones to have an event-based analysis API that may be extended in JavaScript like this:
esil.on('regset', function(){..
esil.on('syscall', function(){esil.regset('rip'For the API, see the functions hook_flag_read(), hook_execute() and hook_mem_read(). A callback should return true or 1 if you want to override the action that it takes. For example, to deny memory reads in a region, or voiding memory writes, effectively making it read-only. Return false or 0 if you want to trace ESIL expression parsing.
Other operations require bindings to external functionalities to work. In this case, rz_ref and rz_io. This must be defined when initializing the ESIL VM.
Io Get/Set
Out ax, 44 44,ax,:ouSelectors (cs,ds,gs…)
Mov eax, ds:[ebp+8] Ebp,8,+,:ds,eax,=