Introduction

Reverse engineering of Android applications is usually considered as somewhat effortless because of the possibility of retrieving the Java representation of the application's code. An attacker is basically able to read through a human-readable version of the code in order to quickly extract the intellectual property, gather some assets, find vulnerabilities and so on. Nowadays, most of the Android application editors are aware of this weakness and try their best to make reverse engineers' work harder. They often rely on integrating obfuscation strategies or shifting sensitive features from Java/Kotlin side to native code thanks to Java Native Interface (shortened JNI [1]). However, the reverse engineering process gets much more complex when they decide to use both — that is, obfuscated native code. As a result, statically looking into the native library's disassembly turns out to be pretty tedious and time-consuming. Fortunately, inspection at runtime is still possible and offers a convenient way to efficiently grasp the inner mechanisms of the application, even over obfuscation.

Since protections against regular debuggers are quite common among popular applications, using a Dynamic Binary Instrumentation (DBI) framework such as Frida [2] remains a great option for a thorough examination. Technically speaking, amongst other powerful features, Frida allows users to inject their own code at the beginning and the end of a native function or replace the whole implementation. Nonetheless, Frida lacks granularity at some point, especially when it comes to inspecting the execution at the instruction scale. In this context, QBDI, a DBI framework we have developed at Quarkslab, can give Frida a hand determining what parts of the code have been executed when calling a given native function.

This article is the follow-up of the talk that has been given at Pass The Salt 2020. Video [3] and slide deck [4] are available online.

Getting started

First of all, we have to properly set our testing environment up. We assume that the device has been rooted and Frida server is already running and ready for use. Besides Frida, we need QBDI to be installed as well. We can either compile it from sources [5] or download a release build for Android. Archives can be retrieved directly from the official page [6]. After decompressing, we have to push the shared library called libQBDI.so on the device, in /data/local/tmp. Along with it, we can also notice the QBDI bindings defined in frida-qbdi.js [7] — this file is responsible for providing an interface over QBDI functions. In other words, it acts as a bridge between QBDI and Frida.

Note that SELinux has to be turned off beforehand otherwise Frida won't be able to load the QBDI shared library into memory due to some restriction rules. An explicit error message would show up, telling that permissions are denied. In most cases, merely running this command line with root privileges should do the job:

We now have all the requirements for writing a script based on both Frida and QBDI.

Tracing a native function

JNI_OnLoad() [8] is always worth examining while performing reverse engineering on JNI shared libraries. Indeed, this function is called right after the library loading and is responsible for initialisation. It is able to interact with the Java side such as setting class' attributes, calling Java functions and registering other native methods through several JNI functions [9]. Editors often rely upon these properties for hiding some sensitive checks and secret inner mechanisms.

In this part, let's pretend we would like to analyse a popular Android application — say Whatsapp [10], whose package name is com.whatsapp, which is currently the most widespread instant-messaging solution on Android. It embeds a bunch of shared libraries, one of which is libwhatsapp.so. Note that this library doesn't lie in the conventional lib/ directory as there's a decompression mechanism at runtime which extracts it from an archive and then loads it into memory. We're aiming at figuring out what its initialisation function is doing.

/**
 * frida -Uf com.whatsapp --no-pause -l script.js
 */

function processJniOnLoad(libraryName) {
    const funcSym = "JNI_OnLoad";
    const funcPtr = Module.findExportByName(libraryName, funcSym);

    console.log("[+] Hooking " + funcSym + "() @ " + funcPtr + "...");
    // jint JNI_OnLoad(JavaVM *vm, void *reserved);
    var funcHook = Interceptor.attach(funcPtr, {
        onEnter: function (args) {
            const vm = args[0];
            const reserved = args[1];
            console.log("[+] " + funcSym + "(" + vm + ", " + reserved + ") called");
        },
        onLeave: function (retval) {
            console.log("[+]\t= " + retval);
        }
    });
}

function waitForLibLoading(libraryName) {
    var isLibLoaded = false;

    Interceptor.attach(Module.findExportByName(null, "android_dlopen_ext"), {
        onEnter: function (args) {
            var libraryPath = Memory.readCString(args[0]);
            if (libraryPath.includes(libraryName)) {
                console.log("[+] Loading library " + libraryPath + "...");
                isLibLoaded = true;
            }
        },
        onLeave: function (args) {
            if (isLibLoaded) {
                processJniOnLoad(libraryName);
                isLibLoaded = false;
            }
        }
    });
}

Java.perform(function() {
    const libraryName = "libwhatsapp.so";
    waitForLibLoading(libraryName);
});

function processJniOnLoad(libraryName) {
    const funcSym = "JNI_OnLoad";
    const funcPtr = Module.findExportByName(libraryName, funcSym);

    console.log("[+] Replacing " + funcSym + "() @ " + funcPtr + "...");
    // jint JNI_OnLoad(JavaVM *vm, void *reserved);
    var replacement = Interceptor.replace(funcPtr, new NativeCallback(function (vm, reserved) {
        const vm = args[0];
        const reserved = args[1];
        console.log("[+] " + funcSym + "(" + vm + ", " + reserved + ") called");
        Interceptor.revert(funcPtr); // revert to the genuine implementation
        Interceptor.flush(); // ensure changes have been actually committed
        var retVal = qbdiExec(this.context, funcPtr, funcSym, [vm, reserved], true);
        processJniOnLoad(libraryName, funcSym); // replace the implementation again for a potential call later on
        return retVal;
    }, "long", ["pointer", "pointer"]));
}

const qbdi = require("/path/to/frida-qbdi");
qbdi.import();

function qbdiExec(ctx, funcPtr, funcSym, args, postSync) {
    var vm = new QBDI(); // create a QBDI VM
    var state = vm.getGPRState();
    var stack = vm.allocateVirtualStack(state, 0x10000); // allocate a virtual stack
    state.synchronizeContext(ctx, SyncDirection.FRIDA_TO_QBDI); // set up QBDI's context

    vm.addInstrumentedModuleFromAddr(funcPtr);

    var icbk = vm.newInstCallback(function (vm, gpr, fpr, data) {
        var inst = vm.getInstAnalysis();
        console.log("0x" + inst.address.toString(16) + " " + inst.disassembly);
        return VMAction.CONTINUE;
    });
    var iid = vm.addCodeCB(InstPosition.PREINST, icbk); // register pre-instruction callback

    var vcbk = vm.newVMCallback(function (vm, evt, gpr, fpr, data) {
        const module = Process.getModuleByAddress(evt.basicBlockStart);
        const offset = ptr(evt.basicBlockStart - module.base);
        if (evt.event & VMEvent.EXEC_TRANSFER_CALL) {
            console.warn(" -> transfer call to 0x" + evt.basicBlockStart.toString(16) + " (" + module.name + "@" + offset + ")");
        }
        if (evt.event & VMEvent.EXEC_TRANSFER_RETURN) {
            console.warn(" <- transfer return from 0x" + evt.basicBlockStart.toString(16) + " (" + module.name + "@" + offset + ")");
        }
        return VMAction.CONTINUE;
    });
    var vid = vm.addVMEventCB(VMEvent.EXEC_TRANSFER_CALL, vcbk); // register transfer callback
    var vid2 = vm.addVMEventCB(VMEvent.EXEC_TRANSFER_RETURN, vcbk); // register return callback

    const javavm = ptr(args[0]);
    const reserved = ptr(args[1]);

    console.log("[+] Executing " + funcSym + "(" + javavm + ", " + reserved + ") through QBDI...");
    vm.call(funcPtr, [javavm, reserved]);
    var retVal = state.getRegister(0); // x86 so return value is stored on $eax
    console.log("[+] " + funcSym + "() returned " + retVal);
    if (postSync) {
        state.synchronizeContext(ctx, SyncDirection.QBDI_TO_FRIDA);
    }
    return retVal;
}

Demonstration

Generating a coverage file

Having a trace containing all the instructions that have been executed is valuable but not really convenient as it is for reverse engineering purposes. Indeed, it's quite unclear to distinguish at a glance what paths have been taken throughout the execution. In order to properly render the captured trace, an integration in a disassembler may be a great idea. That way, one could accurately visualise which basic blocks have been passed through. Nevertheless, most of the disassemblers don't natively provide an option for doing so — luckily for us, various plugins do. In this example, we are using Lighthouse [12] and Dragondance [13], for respectively IDA Pro and Ghidra. These plugins can be easily configured by importing a code coverage file in the drcov format [14]. This format is used by DynamioRIO [15] for storing information about code coverage.

The drcov format is pretty straightforward: besides header fields (version and flavour), a module table describing the process' memory layout must be specified. A unique ID is assigned to each module. Right afterwards, there is what is called the basic block table. This table contains every basic block that has been hit during the execution. A basic block is defined by three properties: its start (relative) address, its size and the ID of the module it belongs to.

Since we are able to place a callback at the beginning of every basic block, we can determine these values, thus generate our own file. Instead of working at the instruction scale, we now need to retrieve the base address and the size of all the executed basic blocks. In practice, we have to define a QBDI event callback function of type BASIC_BLOCK_NEW [16], responsible for gathering such information. Our function will be called whenever QBDI is about to execute a new basic block, unknown so far. In this case, we don't solely want to print some interesting values about this basic block but create a code coverage file which can be imported in a disassembler later on. However, within a Frida script's context, we're not able to manipulate files. As a result, we must stop using the frida command line utility and run our JS script straight from an underlying Python script, relying on the messaging system Frida offers [17]. Doing so allows us to communicate between the JS and Python sides and then perform all actions on the filesystem we need.

var vcbk = vm.newVMCallback(function (vm, evt, gpr, fpr, data) {
    const module = Process.getModuleByAddress(evt.basicBlockStart);
    const base_addr = ptr(evt.basicBlockStart - module.base); // address must be relative to the module's start
    const size = evt.basicBlockEnd - evt.basicBlockStart;
    send({"bb": 1}, getBBInfo(base_addr, size, module)); // send the newly discovered basic block to the Python side
    return VMAction.CONTINUE;
});
var vid = vm.addVMEventCB(VMEvent.BASIC_BLOCK_NEW, vcbk);

Note that the getBBInfo() function only serialises information about the basic block before sending the message over. Obviously, the Python side has to handle this kind of message, keep execution-related content in memory and finally generate a code coverage file accordingly, in the proper format described above. If everything goes well, the output file can be loaded in either IDA Pro or Ghidra thanks to their corresponding code coverage plugins. All the executed basic blocks will be highlighted — it's now much clearer for us to follow the execution flow and focus only on relevant parts of the code.

Conclusion

The easiness of Java/Kotlin reverse engineering encourages Android application developers to rather implement sensitive procedures in C/C++. As a result, reverse engineers' work usually gets painful. Using QBDI alongside Frida turns out to be quite a good option in particular when it comes to looking into those native functions. This combination indeed offers a way to figure out what a function is doing at different levels: function, basic block and instruction scale. Moreover, one could take advantage of QBDI's execution transfer events to resolve external calls to system libraries or keep track of memory accesses and then get the big picture of the execution. To efficiently assist reverse engineers, gathered information can be wisely integrated in some existing reverse-engineering-oriented tools for refining their static analysis. Besides generating a visual representation of the execution flow, getting such feedbacks from runtime is valuable for other security-related purposes such as fuzzing. It's also worth noting that if performances matter, Frida and QBDI both provide C/C++ APIs.

Acknowlegments

Thanks to my colleagues for proofreading this article.