AI Summary: Tiny Tracer is a binary instrumentation tool designed for tracing API calls, defined local functions, selected instructions, and inline system calls, while also evading various anti-debug and anti-VM techniques. It generates detailed reports in a .tag format, which can be utilized by other analysis tools, facilitating deeper insights into a program’s execution flow. The tool is primarily aimed at security researchers and analysts who need to examine malicious binaries or analyze software behavior in a controlled environment.

README

tiny_tracer

A Pin Tool for tracing:

• API calls, including input and output of selected functions
• defined local functions
• selected instructions: RDTSC, CPUID, INT
• inline system calls, including parameters of selected syscalls
• transition between sections of the traced module (helpful in finding OEP of the packed module)
• executed instructions in defined code fragments

Evades some of the known anti-debug and anti-VM techniques

Generates a report in a .tag format (which can be loaded into other analysis tools):

RVA;traced event

i.e.

345c2;section: .text
58069;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll.IsProcessorFeaturePresent
3976d;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll.LoadLibraryExW
3983c;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll.GetProcAddress
3999d;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll.InitializeCriticalSectionEx
398ac;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll.FlsAlloc
3995d;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\KernelBase.dll.FlsSetValue
49275;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll.LoadLibraryExW
4934b;called: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\kernel32.dll.GetProcAddress
...

🚧 How to build

On Windows

To compile the prepared project you need to use Visual Studio >= 2012. It was tested with Intel Pin 3.31.
Clone this repo into \source\tools that is inside your Pin root directory. Open the project in Visual Studio and build. Detailed description available here.
To build with Intel Pin < 3.26 on Windows, use the appropriate legacy Visual Studio project.

On Linux

For now the support for Linux is experimental. Yet it is possible to build and use Tiny Tracer on Linux as well. Please refer tiny_runner.sh for more information. Detailed description available here.

⚙ Usage

📖 Details about the usage you will find on the project’s Wiki.

🛠 Helpers

For automatic generation of params.txt for API arguments tracing, try IAT-Tracer by YoavLevi

WARNINGS

• In order for Pin to work correctly, Kernel Debugging must be DISABLED.
• In install32_64 you can find a utility that checks if Kernel Debugger is disabled (kdb_check.exe, source), and it is used by the Tiny Tracer’s .bat scripts. This utilty sometimes gets flagged as a malware by Windows Defender (it is a known false positive). If you encounter this issue, you may need to exclude the installation directory from Windows Defender scans.
• Since the version 3.20 Pin has dropped a support for old versions of Windows. If you need to use the tool on Windows < 8, try to compile it with Pin 3.19.

🤔 Questions? Ideas? Join Discussions!