Implementing the "." word from Forth in x86 assembly - macos

I am trying to make a function that, prints a number out on screen. Eventually, I'll make it able to take the top stack item, print it, and then pop it (like the "." word in Forth). But for now, I am trying to keep it simple. I think that I need to align the call stack in some way - and I figured that pushing and popping an arbitrary register before and after calling printf (rbx) would do the trick - but I am still getting a segmentation fault. A backtrace in GDB hasn't helped me make any progress either. Does anyone know why this code is causing a segmentation fault, and how to fix it?
How I am assembling (GAS):
gcc -masm=intel
.data
format_num: .ascii "%d\0"
.text
.global _main
.extern _printf
print_num:
push rbx
lea rdi, format_num[RIP]
mov esi, 250
xor eax, eax
call _printf
pop rbx
ret
_main:
call print_num
mov rdi, 0
mov rax, 0x2000001
syscall

Related

Closing a file in x86_64 nasm assembly on mac

I am having difficulties closing a file in nasm assembly on mac 64 bit. My goal is to make a file and write to it. For now I think that I opened the file the correct way. Now I need to close the file so that the file actually gets made. Here is my code so far.
global start
; default rel
section .text
start:
;open
mov rax, 0x2000005
mov rdi, file
mov rsi, 1
syscall
;close
mov rax, 0x2000006
mov rdi, file ;I need to replace this line. With what though?
syscall
mov rax, 0x2000001 ;Exiting
xor rdi, rdi
syscall
section .data
str: db "Hello world", 0
strlen: equ $ - str
file: db "test.txt"
lenfile: equ $ - file
I did a bit of research before I posted this question. I need to get something called a file handler, I think thats what its called. Help would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT
Answer:
;close
mov rdi, rax ;rax contains the file handler from the previous syscall. Moving it here before it gets cleared
mov rax, 0x2000006
syscall
Edit 2
;close
mov rdi, rax ;rax contains the file handler from the previous syscall. Moving it here before it gets cleared
mov rax, 0x2000006
mov rsi, 0x0201
syscall
Actual answer
Turns out that I needed to write the file path including the file and not just the file.
Edit 2 works btw.

How to fix gdb skipping breakpoints

I wrote an assembly code to test multiplication and division with integers. After assembling the code with -g and compiling it with gcc -g; I put a series of breakpoints in GDB, before and after the arithmetic operations.
Some breakpoints are skipped and GDB ends the debugging session.
What could be happening? I attach example code and picture of it.
Debian 10.8 (gcc 8.3.0-6)and Nasm assembler.
I would appreciate the help.
test code
section .bss
data: resq 1
section .text
global main
main:
push rbp
mov rbp,rsp
mov rax,77
mov rbx,2
mul rbx
mov [rel data],rax
mov rsp,rbp
pop rbp
mov rax,60
mov rdi,0
syscall
ok this is the gdb output; consider two breakpoints, one is mul bx, and the other on mov rsp,rbp; before the syscall exit.
Breakpoint 2, in__libc_csu_init()
(gdb)c
Continuing.
[inferior 1 process(1974) exited normally]
(gdb)

Why "mov rcx, rax" is required when calling printf in x64 assembler?

I am trying to learn x64 assembler. I wrote "hello world" and tried to call printf using the following code:
EXTERN printf: PROC
PUBLIC hello_world_asm
.data
hello_msg db "Hello world", 0
.code
hello_world_asm PROC
push rbp ; save frame pointer
mov rbp, rsp ; fix stack pointer
sub rsp, 8 * (4 + 2) ; shadow space (32bytes)
lea rax, offset hello_msg
mov rcx, rax ; <---- QUESTION ABOUT THIS LINE
call printf
; epilog. restore stack pointer
mov rsp, rbp
pop rbp
ret
hello_world_asm ENDP
END
At the beginning I called printf without "mov rcx, rax", which ended up with access violation. Getting all frustrated I just wrote in C++ a call to printf and looked in the disassembler. There I saw the line "mov rcx, rax" which fixed everything, but WHY do I need to move RAX to RCX ??? Clearly I am missing something fundamental.
Thanks for your help!
p.s. a reference to good x64 assembler tutorial is more than welcome :-) couldn't find one.
It isn't required, this code just wastes an instruction by doing an lea into RAX and then copying to RCX, when it could do
lea rcx, hello_msg
call printf ; printf(rcx, rdx, r8, r9, stack...)
printf on 64-bit Windows ignores RAX as an input; RAX is the return-value register in the Windows x64 calling convention (and can also be clobbered by void functions). The first 4 args go in RCX, RDX, R8, and R9 (if they're integer/pointer like here).
Also note that FP args in xmm0..3 have to be mirrored to the corresponding integer register for variadic functions like printf (MS's docs), but for integer args it's not required to movq xmm0, rcx.
In the x86-64 System V calling convention, variadic functions want al = the number of FP args passed in registers. (So you'd xor eax,eax to zero it). But the x64 Windows convention doesn't need that; it's optimized to make variadic functions easy to implement (instead of for higher performance / more register args for normal functions).
A few 32-bit calling conventions pass an arg in EAX, for example Irvine32, or gcc -m32 -mregparm=1. But no standard x86-64 calling conventions do. You can do whatever you like with private asm functions you write, but you have to follow the standard calling conventions when calling library functions.
Also note that lea rax, offset hello_msg was weird; LEA uses memory-operand syntax and machine encoding (and gives you the address instead of the data). offset hello_msg is an immediate, not a memory operand. But MASM accepts it as a memory operand anyway in this context.
You could use mov ecx, offset hello_msg in position-dependent code, otherwise you want a RIP-relative LEA. I'm not sure of the MASM syntax for that.
The Windows 64-bit (x64/AMD64) calling convention passes the first four integer arguments in RCX, RDX, R8 and R9.
The return value is stored in RAX and it is volatile so a C/C++ compiler is allowed to use it as generic storage in a function.

x64 nasm: pushing memory addresses onto the stack & call function

I'm pretty new to x64-assembly on the Mac, so I'm getting confused porting some 32-bit code in 64-bit.
The program should simply print out a message via the printf function from the C standart library.
I've started with this code:
section .data
msg db 'This is a test', 10, 0 ; something stupid here
section .text
global _main
extern _printf
_main:
push rbp
mov rbp, rsp
push msg
call _printf
mov rsp, rbp
pop rbp
ret
Compiling it with nasm this way:
$ nasm -f macho64 main.s
Returned following error:
main.s:12: error: Mach-O 64-bit format does not support 32-bit absolute addresses
I've tried to fix that problem byte changing the code to this:
section .data
msg db 'This is a test', 10, 0 ; something stupid here
section .text
global _main
extern _printf
_main:
push rbp
mov rbp, rsp
mov rax, msg ; shouldn't rax now contain the address of msg?
push rax ; push the address
call _printf
mov rsp, rbp
pop rbp
ret
It compiled fine with the nasm command above but now there is a warning while compiling the object file with gcc to actual program:
$ gcc main.o
ld: warning: PIE disabled. Absolute addressing (perhaps -mdynamic-no-pic) not
allowed in code signed PIE, but used in _main from main.o. To fix this warning,
don't compile with -mdynamic-no-pic or link with -Wl,-no_pie
Since it's a warning not an error I've executed the a.out file:
$ ./a.out
Segmentation fault: 11
Hope anyone knows what I'm doing wrong.
The 64-bit OS X ABI complies at large to the System V ABI - AMD64 Architecture Processor Supplement. Its code model is very similar to the Small position independent code model (PIC) with the differences explained here. In that code model all local and small data is accessed directly using RIP-relative addressing. As noted in the comments by Z boson, the image base for 64-bit Mach-O executables is beyond the first 4 GiB of the virtual address space, therefore push msg is not only an invalid way to put the address of msg on the stack, but it is also an impossible one since PUSH does not support 64-bit immediate values. The code should rather look similar to:
; this is what you *would* do for later args on the stack
lea rax, [rel msg] ; RIP-relative addressing
push rax
But in that particular case one needs not push the value on the stack at all. The 64-bit calling convention mandates that the fist 6 integer/pointer arguments are passed in registers RDI, RSI, RDX, RCX, R8, and R9, exactly in that order. The first 8 floating-point or vector arguments go into XMM0, XMM1, ..., XMM7. Only after all the available registers are used or there are arguments that cannot fit in any of those registers (e.g. a 80-bit long double value) the stack is used. 64-bit immediate pushes are performed using MOV (the QWORD variant) and not PUSH. Simple return values are passed back in the RAX register. The caller must also provide stack space for the callee to save some of the registers.
printf is a special function because it takes variable number of arguments. When calling such functions AL (the low byte of RAX) should be set to the number of floating-point arguments, passed in the vector registers. Also note that RIP-relative addressing is preferred for data that lies within 2 GiB of the code.
Here is how gcc translates printf("This is a test\n"); into assembly on OS X:
xorl %eax, %eax # (1)
leaq L_.str(%rip), %rdi # (2)
callq _printf # (3)
L_.str:
.asciz "This is a test\n"
(this is AT&T style assembly, source is left, destination is right, register names are prefixed with %, data width is encoded as a suffix to the instruction name)
At (1) zero is put into AL (by zeroing the whole RAX which avoids partial-register delays) since no floating-point arguments are being passed. At (2) the address of the string is loaded in RDI. Note how the value is actually an offset from the current value of RIP. Since the assembler doesn't know what this value would be, it puts a relocation request in the object file. The linker then sees the relocation and puts the correct value at link time.
I am not a NASM guru, but I think the following code should do it:
default rel ; make [rel msg] the default for [msg]
section .data
msg: db 'This is a test', 10, 0 ; something stupid here
section .text
global _main
extern _printf
_main:
push rbp ; re-aligns the stack by 16 before call
mov rbp, rsp
xor eax, eax ; al = 0 FP args in XMM regs
lea rdi, [rel msg]
call _printf
mov rsp, rbp
pop rbp
ret
No answer yet has explained why NASM reports
Mach-O 64-bit format does not support 32-bit absolute addresses
The reason NASM won't do this is explained in Agner Fog's Optimizing Assembly manual in section 3.3 Addressing modes under the subsection titled 32-bit absolute addressing in 64 bit mode he writes
32-bit absolute addresses cannot be used in Mac OS X, where addresses are above 2^32 by
default.
This is not a problem on Linux or Windows. In fact I already showed this works at static-linkage-with-glibc-without-calling-main. That hello world code uses 32-bit absolute addressing with elf64 and runs fine.
#HristoIliev suggested using rip relative addressing but did not explain that 32-bit absolute addressing in Linux would work as well. In fact if you change lea rdi, [rel msg] to lea rdi, [msg] it assembles and runs fine with nasm -efl64 but fails with nasm -macho64
Like this:
section .data
msg db 'This is a test', 10, 0 ; something stupid here
section .text
global _main
extern _printf
_main:
push rbp
mov rbp, rsp
xor al, al
lea rdi, [msg]
call _printf
mov rsp, rbp
pop rbp
ret
You can check that this is an absolute 32-bit address and not rip relative with objdump. However, it's important to point out that the preferred method is still rip relative addressing. Agner in the same manual writes:
There is absolutely no reason to use absolute addresses for simple memory operands. Rip-
relative addresses make instructions shorter, they eliminate the need for relocation at load
time, and they are safe to use in all systems.
So when would use use 32-bit absolute addresses in 64-bit mode? Static arrays is a good candidate. See the following subsection Addressing static arrays in 64 bit mode. The simple case would be e.g:
mov eax, [A+rcx*4]
where A is the absolute 32-bit address of the static array. This works fine with Linux but once again you can't do this with Mac OS X because the image base is larger than 2^32 by default. To to this on Mac OS X see example 3.11c and 3.11d in Agner's manual. In example 3.11c you could do
mov eax, [(imagerel A) + rbx + rcx*4]
Where you use the extern reference from Mach O __mh_execute_header to get the image base. In example 3.11c you use rip relative addressing and load the address like this
lea rbx, [rel A]; rel tells nasm to do [rip + A]
mov eax, [rbx + 4*rcx] ; A[i]
According to the documentation for the x86 64bit instruction set http://download.intel.com/products/processor/manual/325383.pdf
PUSH only accepts 8, 16 and 32bit immediate values (64bit registers and register addressed memory blocks are allowed though).
PUSH msg
Where msg is a 64bit immediate address will not compile as you found out.
What calling convention is _printf defined as in your 64bit library?
Is it expecting the parameter on the stack or using a fast-call convention where the parameters on in registers? Because x86-64 makes more general purpose registers available the fast-call convention is used more often.

Segmentation fault in assembly program

I am trying to spawn a shell using the following code:
Section .Text
global _start
_start:
jmp short TrickCall
_ReturnHere:
pop esi
xor eax,eax
mov byte [esi+7],al
lea ebx,[esi]
mov long [esi+8],ebx
mov long [esi+12],eax
mov byte al,0x0b
mov ebx,esi
lea ecx,[esi+8]
lea edx,[esi+12]
int 0x80
TrickCall:
call _ReturnHere
db "/bin/shJAAAANNNN"
I am using gcc version 4.4.3 as my compiler. When I run it using gdb it gives the following output:
(gdb) run
Starting program: /root/spawn_shell
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x08048059 in _ReturnHere ()
It cannot access the memory address of _ReturnHere. Any way to get around this?
Your problem is DEP, when you pop the return address off the stack and try to write to it, its not marked as writable, only readable & executable. You either need to disable DEP (bad, its meant to protect against exploits that do something like this) or put the text just after call _ReturnHere into a RW(X) memory.

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