http://blog.dornea.nu/2015/07/01/debugging-android-native-shared-libraries/
Since I haven't done this before, I thought I could share some experiences with you. All this began during some APK analysis which was heavily using JNIs. In my particular case Java Native Interfaces were used to call functions inside libraries written in C/C++. At that time I was quite unfamiliar with JNIs and how they actually work. Besides that I haven't debugged any native applications/libraries on Android before. So this was the perfect opportunity to have a closer look at Android NDK and its debugging features.
Create Eclipse project
In this post I'll first create and build a simple Android project that includes native code using the JNI. As a main source I have used this extraordinary Android JNI tutorial which I highly appreciate. Following the instructions described in the post, I have managed to successfully create an empty Android project (File -> New -> Project -> Android Application Project) for my purposes.
%%bash
tree -L 1
And in src
we have following classes:
%ls -lR src/com/example/jni_debug_demo
Create Android project
In order to be able to build the APK, you'll have to create a new Android project:
%%bash
/home/victor/work/android-sdk/tools/android update project --target android-19 -p .
Now you should be able to build the project and also generate the APK:
%%bash
ant clean release | grep BUILD
Add JNI functionalities
Now that we have the base Android project, let's add some JNI functionalities to the project. To compile the shared library (using gcc/g++) we'll need a valid C header which can be computed from SquaredWrapper (class used in previously mentioned tutorial).
C header
The compiled classes are now in "./bin/classes
". Let's generate the header files for SquaredWrapper
:
%%bash
$ javah -jni -classpath ~/work/android-sdk/platforms/android-19/android.jar:./bin/classes -o square.h com.example.jni_debug_demo.SquaredWrapper $ cat square.h /* DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - it is machine generated */ #include/* Header for class com_example_jni_debug_demo_SquaredWrapper */ #ifndef _Included_com_example_jni_debug_demo_SquaredWrapper #define _Included_com_example_jni_debug_demo_SquaredWrapper #ifdef __cplusplus extern "C" { #endif /* * Class: com_example_jni_debug_demo_SquaredWrapper * Method: squared * Signature: (I)I */ JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL Java_com_example_jni_1debug_1demo_SquaredWrapper_squared (JNIEnv *, jclass, jint); #ifdef __cplusplus } #endif #endif
So there is a function Java_com_example_jni_1debug_1demo_SquaredWrapper_squared (pay attention to the naming convention) which has 3 arguments. I won't discuss this further and I'll simple copy the file into a new folder jni
inside the project:
%%bash
mkdir jni
mv square.h jni/
C source
Now that we have the function definition and the prototype generated by javah
we can easily implement the C source as follows:
$ cat jni/square.c
So nothing special about it. Due to the introductory aspect of this post I'll try to keep things simple. You can of course go further and implement more complex functions.
Build the library
Create a Makefile for all the Android build tools.
$ cat jni/Android.mk
And now build the library (remember to set the NDK_DEBUG flag otherwise you won't be able to debug your native code):
%%bash
NDK_DEBUG=1 /home/victor/work/android-ndk-r10e/ndk-build readelf -h libs/armeabi/libsquared.so
Call the library
In MainActivity
some static routines of the class SquaredWrapper
are being called:
public class MainActivity extends Activity { private EditText etInput; private TextView txtTo2; private TextView txtTo4; @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); // Define Input EditText, TextViews etInput = (EditText) findViewById(R.id.etInput); txtTo2 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.resTo2); txtTo4 = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.resTo4); int b = 3; int a = SquaredWrapper.to4(b); Log.i("JNIDemo", String.format("%d->%d", b,a)); } public void cbCalculate(View view) { int in = 0; try{ in = Integer.valueOf( etInput.getText().toString() ); } catch(NumberFormatException e) { return ; } txtTo2.setText(String.format("%d", SquaredWrapper.squared(in))); txtTo4.setText(String.format("%d", SquaredWrapper.to4(in))); } }
Build the project again:
%%bash
ant clean release | grep -e "^BUILD"
Run the demo application
First let's build the APK with debug enabled and sign it using a debug key:
%%bash
ant clean debug | grep -e "^BUILD"
Now you can install ./bin/MainActivity-debug.apk
on your Android device (whether virtual or real)
%%bash
/home/victor/work/android-sdk/platform-tools/adb devices
%%bash
adb install ./bin/MainActivity-debug.apk 2> /dev/null
%%bash
adb shell am start -n com.example.jni_debug_demo/com.example.jni_debug_demo.MainActivity
Greping for the logcat messages shows:
$ adb logcat -s JNIDemo --------- beginning of /dev/log/system --------- beginning of /dev/log/main I/JNIDemo ( 5524): 3->81 I/JNIDemo ( 5524): 3->81 I/JNIDemo ( 5524): 3->81 ^C
Debug the application
For the next steps a rooted device is required. Besides that you should install the Android NDK if you haven't done this yet.
Remount /system as rw
First you'll have to mount /system
with read-write rights:
%%bash
adb shell mount | grep -e "system"
%%bash
adb shell "su -c 'mount -o rw,remount /system'"
%%bash
adb shell mount | grep -e "system"
Copy gdbserver to device
Now you'll have to copy the gdbserver from the Android NDK into /system/bin
:
%%bash
find /home/victor/work/android-ndk-r10e/ -type f -name "gdbserver"
%%bash
adb shell cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -e "Processor"
%%bash
adb push /home/victor/work/android-ndk-r10e/prebuilt/android-arm/gdbserver/gdbserver /mnt/sdcard/tmp 2> /dev/null adb shell "su -c 'cp /mnt/sdcard/tmp/gdbserver /system/bin/'"
Copy ARM libraries to your client
In order to be able to find debug information/symbols you'll need all ARM libraries all your device/emulator to be copied to your PC. gdb
will need them later on.
%%bash
mkdir system_lib
cd system_lib adb pull /system/lib 2> /dev/null
Run the application
%%bash
adb shell am start -n com.example.jni_debug_demo/com.example.jni_debug_demo.MainActivity
%%bash
adb shell ps | grep jni_debug_demo
Now that the app is running we're ready to start the debugger and attach it to the process ID 28054.
Attach gdb to process
In project's root directory you'll run ndk-gdb
which is part of the Android NDK package.
%%bash
ndk-gdb --verbose > /dev/null
Without paying attention to the warning message, here are the steps ndk-gdb
will do for you
- check if application is running
- setup network redirection (port forwarding)
adb_cmd forward tcp:5039 localfilesystem:/data/data/com.example.jni_debug_demo/debug-socket
- pull several utilities (app_process, linker) from the device/emulator
- start
gdb
- attach to the process
One could of course do all these steps manually.
1) Do port forwarding:
$ adb forward tcp:1337 tcp:1337
1) Attach gdbserver
to the process (on the device)
root@Android:/ # ps | grep jni
u0_a159 28054 135 561056 14100 ffffffff 400a499c S com.example.jni_debug_demo
root@Android:/ # gdbserver :1337 --attach 28054
Attached; pid = 28054
Listening on port 1337
2) Connect gdb client
to the server:
$ /home/victor/work/android-ndk-r10e/toolchains/arm-linux-androideabi-4.9/prebuilt/linux-x86_64/bin/arm-linux-androideabi-gdb
...
> target remote :1337
...
But I still recommend using ndk-gdb
.
Read debugging information
And now let's go back to the previously mentioned warning
message:
warning: Could not load shared library symbols for 108 libraries, e.g. libstdc++.so.
gdb
is telling us that it can't find any debugging symbols for the loaded (ARM) libraries. In that case we'll have to specify the path where it can find that information:
system_lib
: contains all ARM libraries from the device (/system/lib)obj/local/armeabi
: contains debugging information aboutlibsquared.so
(our target)
$ ndk-gdb --verbose
...
gef> set solib-search-path system_lib/:obj/local/armeabi/
Reading symbols from system_lib/libc.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for system_lib/libc.so
Reading symbols from system_lib/libstdc++.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for system_lib/libstdc++.so
Reading symbols from system_lib/libm.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for system_lib/libm.so
Reading symbols from system_lib/liblog.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for system_lib/liblog.so
Reading symbols from system_lib/libcutils.so...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
...
You can now verify the debugging information via info sharedlibrary
:
gef> info sharedlibrary
From To Syms Read Shared Object Library
0x40053a80 0x400619e8 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/obj/local/armeabi/linker
0x4008c500 0x400d2e54 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/libc.so
0x400f4828 0x400f49ec Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/libstdc++.so
0x400f9940 0x4010d5b8 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/libm.so
0x4007a190 0x4007bdf8 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/liblog.so
0x4006f6c8 0x40074ac4 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/libcutils.so
0x4012eb1c 0x40131210 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/libgccdemangle.so
0x40142bf0 0x40152a84 Yes (*) /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/system_lib/libz.so
...
0x60b5bbe4 0x60b5d174 Yes /home/victor/workspace/jni_debug_demo/obj/local/armeabi/libsquared.so
No gralloc.mt6582.so
(*): Shared library is missing debugging information.
Find target function
From last output you can see that libsquared.so
starts at address 0x60b5bbe4. Let's see what we can find there:
Bingo! So Java_com_example_jni_1debug_1demo_SquaredWrapper_squared
starts at 0x60b5bc28. We'll definitely set a breakpoint at that address:
gef> b Java_com_example_jni_1debug_1demo_SquaredWrapper_squared
Breakpoint 1 at 0x60b5bc40: file jni/square.c, line 5. gef>
Ensure that you are using correct file paths
Run the "info sources" command to see the source files discovered by GDB.
Trigger and debug function
For the targeted function to be executed we'll have to trigger its execution by clicking on the "Calculate" button in the UI. Before doing that you should tell gdb
to continue execution:
gef> continue
Continuing.
After having pressed the button in the UI, you should see sth similar to this:
gef> continue
Continuing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------[regs]
$r0 0x4187fe30 $r1 0x7a100019 $r2 0x00000008 $r3 0x578bbd18
$r4 0x57c49258 $r5 0x41882860 $r6 0x00000004 $r7 0x578bbccc
$r8 0xbed1e2a8 $r9 0x578bbcc4 $r10 0x41882870 $r11 0xbed1e2a4
$r12 0x60b5bc28 $sp 0xbed1e290 $lr 0x418a1750 $pc 0x60b5bc40
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------[stack]
0xbed1e290:
0xbed1e294:
0xbed1e298:
0xbed1e29c:
0xbed1e2a0:
0xbed1e2a4:
0xbed1e2a8:
0xbed1e2ac:
0xbed1e2b0:
0xbed1e2b4:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------[code]
0x60b5bc2c : add r11, sp, #0
0x60b5bc30 : sub sp, sp, #20
0x60b5bc34 : str r0, [r11, #-8]
0x60b5bc38 : str r1, [r11, #-12]
0x60b5bc3c : str r2, [r11, #-16]
0x60b5bc40 : ldr r3, [r11, #-16] <<=
0x60b5bc44 : ldr r2, [r11, #-16]
0x60b5bc48 : mul r3, r2, r3
0x60b5bc4c : mov r0, r3
0x60b5bc50 : sub sp, r11, #0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------[trace]
#0 Java_com_example_jni_1debug_1demo_SquaredWrapper_squared (je=0x4187fe30, jc=0x7a100019, base=8) at jni/square.c:5
#1 0x418a1750 in ?? ()
Backtrace stopped: previous frame identical to this frame (corrupt stack?)
Breakpoint 1, Java_com_example_jni_1debug_1demo_SquaredWrapper_squared (je=0x4187fe30, jc=0x7a100019, base=8) at jni/square.c:5
5 return (base*base);
You can see that the execution currently stopped at 0x60b5bc40. Now you can inspect the registers, set additional breakpoints, step into routines etc.
At this point you should now be equipped with enough knowledge to dissect shared libraries and get some reverse engineering job done. Although this was a quite easy one due to the fact that we had debug symbols and were able to compile the library, the same techniques should also work on stripped binaries. In the post I'll some binary analysis on some random Android shared library using radare.