Qiling’s use case, blog and related work
Qiling is an advanced binary emulation framework, with the following features:
- Emulate multi-platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, BSD, UEFI, DOS, MBR.
- Emulate multi-architectures: 8086, X86, X86_64, ARM, ARM64, MIPS, RISC-V, PowerPC.
- Support multiple file formats: PE, Mach-O, ELF, COM, MBR.
- Support Windows Driver (.sys), Linux Kernel Module (.ko) & macOS Kernel (.kext) via Demigod.
- Emulates & sandbox code in an isolated environment.
- Provides a fully configurable sandbox.
- Provides in-depth memory, register, OS level and filesystem level API.
- Fine-grain instrumentation: allows hooks at various levels
(instruction/basic-block/memory-access/exception/syscall/IO/etc.)
- Provides virtual machine level API such as saving and restoring the current execution state.
- Supports cross architecture and platform debugging capabilities.
- Built-in debugger with reverse debugging capability.
- Allows dynamic hot patch on-the-fly running code, including the loaded library.
- True framework in Python, making it easy to build customized security analysis tools on top.
Qiling also made its way to various international conferences.
2022:
2021:
2020:
2019:
Qiling is backed by Unicorn Engine.
Visit our website for more information.
License
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
Qiling vs. other Emulators
There are many open-source emulators, but two projects closest to Qiling
are Unicorn & QEMU user mode.
This section explains the main differences of Qiling against them.
Qiling vs. Unicorn engine
Built on top of Unicorn, but Qiling & Unicorn are two different animals.
- Unicorn is just a CPU emulator, so it focuses on emulating CPU instructions,
that can understand emulator memory.
Beyond that, Unicorn is not aware of higher level concepts, such as dynamic
libraries, system calls, I/O handling or executable formats like PE, Mach-O
or ELF. As a result, Unicorn can only emulate raw machine instructions,
without Operating System (OS) context.
- Qiling is designed as a higher level framework, that leverages Unicorn to
emulate CPU instructions, but can understand OS: it has executable format
loaders (for PE, Mach-O & ELF currently), dynamic linkers (so we can
load & relocate shared libraries), syscall & IO handlers. For this reason,
Qiling can run executable binary without requiring its native OS.
Qiling vs. QEMU user mode
QEMU user mode does a similar thing to our emulator, that is, to emulate whole
executable binaries in a cross-architecture way.
However, Qiling offers some important differences against QEMU user mode:
- Qiling is a true analysis framework,
that allows you to build your own dynamic analysis tools on top (in Python).
Meanwhile, QEMU is just a tool, not a framework.
- Qiling can perform dynamic instrumentation, and can even hot patch code at
runtime. QEMU does neither.
- Not only working cross-architecture, Qiling is also cross-platform.
For example, you can run Linux ELF file on top of Windows.
In contrast, QEMU user mode only runs binary of the same OS, such as Linux
ELF on Linux, due to the way it forwards syscall from emulated code to
native OS.
- Qiling supports more platforms, including Windows, macOS, Linux & BSD. QEMU
user mode can only handle Linux & BSD.
Installation
Please see setup guide file for how to install Qiling Framework.
Examples
The example below shows how to use Qiling framework in the most
straightforward way to emulate a Windows executable.
from qiling import Qiling
if __name__ == "__main__":
# initialize Qiling instance, specifying the executable to emulate and the emulated system root.
# note that the current working directory is assumed to be Qiling home
ql = Qiling([r'examples/rootfs/x86_windows/bin/x86_hello.exe'], r'examples/rootfs/x86_windows')
# start emulation
ql.run()
- The following example shows how a Windows crackme may be patched dynamically
to make it always display the “Congratulation” dialog.
from qiling import Qiling
def force_call_dialog_func(ql: Qiling):
# get DialogFunc address from current stack frame
lpDialogFunc = ql.stack_read(-8)
# setup stack memory for DialogFunc
ql.stack_push(0)
ql.stack_push(1001) # IDS_APPNAME
ql.stack_push(0x111) # WM_COMMAND
ql.stack_push(0)
# push return address
ql.stack_push(0x0401018)
# resume emulation from DialogFunc address
ql.arch.regs.eip = lpDialogFunc
if __name__ == "__main__":
# initialize Qiling instance
ql = Qiling([r'rootfs/x86_windows/bin/Easy_CrackMe.exe'], r'rootfs/x86_windows')
# NOP out some code
ql.patch(0x004010B5, b'\x90\x90')
ql.patch(0x004010CD, b'\x90\x90')
ql.patch(0x0040110B, b'\x90\x90')
ql.patch(0x00401112, b'\x90\x90')
# hook at an address with a callback
ql.hook_address(force_call_dialog_func, 0x00401016)
ql.run()
The below YouTube video shows how the above example works.
Emulating ARM router firmware on Ubuntu x64 host
Qiling Framework hot-patches and emulates an ARM router’s /usr/bin/httpd on
an x86_64 Ubuntu host.
Qiling’s IDA Pro Plugin: Instrument and Decrypt Mirai’s Secret
This video demonstrates how Qiling’s IDA Pro plugin can make IDA Pro run with
Qiling instrumentation engine.
GDB server with IDA Pro demo
Solving a simple CTF challenge with Qiling Framework and IDA Pro
Emulating MBR
Qiling Framework emulates MBR
Qiling also provides a friendly tool named qltool to quickly emulate shellcode & executable binaries.
Installing Qiling with pip also installs the qltool command, including
qltool qltui for the terminal UI. In a source checkout, use ./qltool as
shown below. Example binaries and rootfs files must be downloaded separately.
With qltool, easy execution can be performed:
With shellcode:
$ ./qltool code --os linux --arch arm --format hex -f examples/shellcodes/linarm32_tcp_reverse_shell.hex
With binary file:
$ ./qltool run -f examples/rootfs/x8664_linux/bin/x8664_hello --rootfs examples/rootfs/x8664_linux/
With binary and GDB debugger enabled:
$ ./qltool run -f examples/rootfs/x8664_linux/bin/x8664_hello --gdb 127.0.0.1:9999 --rootfs examples/rootfs/x8664_linux
With code coverage collection (UEFI only for now):
$ ./qltool run -f examples/rootfs/x8664_efi/bin/TcgPlatformSetupPolicy --rootfs examples/rootfs/x8664_efi --coverage-format drcov --coverage-file TcgPlatformSetupPolicy.cov
With JSON output (Windows, mainly):
$ ./qltool run -f examples/rootfs/x86_windows/bin/x86_hello.exe --rootfs examples/rootfs/x86_windows/ --console False --json
Get the latest info from our website https://www.qiling.io
Contact us at email [email protected],
via Twitter @qiling_io.
Core developers, Key Contributors and etc.
Please refer to CREDITS.md.
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