Meaning of a Common String In Executables? - macos

Question

There appear to be some similar-looking long alphanumeric strings that commonly occur in Mach-O 64 bit executables and ELF 64-bit LSB executables among other symbols that are not alphanumeric:
cat /bin/bash | grep -c "AWAVAUATSH"
has 181 results, and
cat /usr/bin/gzip | grep -c "AWAVAUATSH"
has 9 results.
What are these strings?

Answer 1

Interesting question. Since I didn't know the answer, here are the steps I took to figure it out:
Where in the file does the string occur?
strings -otx /bin/gzip | grep AWAVAUATUSH
35e0 AWAVAUATUSH
69a0 AWAVAUATUSH
7920 AWAVAUATUSH
8900 AWAVAUATUSH
92a0 AWAVAUATUSH
Which section is that in?
readelf -WS /bin/gzip
There are 28 section headers, starting at offset 0x16860:
Section Headers:
[Nr] Name Type Address Off Size ES Flg Lk Inf Al
[ 0] NULL 0000000000000000 000000 000000 00 0 0 0
[ 1] .interp PROGBITS 0000000000400238 000238 00001c 00 A 0 0 1
[ 2] .note.ABI-tag NOTE 0000000000400254 000254 000020 00 A 0 0 4
[ 3] .note.gnu.build-id NOTE 0000000000400274 000274 000024 00 A 0 0 4
[ 4] .gnu.hash GNU_HASH 0000000000400298 000298 000038 00 A 5 0 8
[ 5] .dynsym DYNSYM 00000000004002d0 0002d0 000870 18 A 6 1 8
[ 6] .dynstr STRTAB 0000000000400b40 000b40 000360 00 A 0 0 1
[ 7] .gnu.version VERSYM 0000000000400ea0 000ea0 0000b4 02 A 5 0 2
[ 8] .gnu.version_r VERNEED 0000000000400f58 000f58 000080 00 A 6 1 8
[ 9] .rela.dyn RELA 0000000000400fd8 000fd8 000090 18 A 5 0 8
[10] .rela.plt RELA 0000000000401068 001068 0007e0 18 A 5 12 8
[11] .init PROGBITS 0000000000401848 001848 00001a 00 AX 0 0 4
[12] .plt PROGBITS 0000000000401870 001870 000550 10 AX 0 0 16
[13] .text PROGBITS 0000000000401dc0 001dc0 00f1ba 00 AX 0 0 16
[14] .fini PROGBITS 0000000000410f7c 010f7c 000009 00 AX 0 0 4
... etc.
From above output, we see that all instances of AWAVAUATUSH are in .text section (which covers [0x1dc0, 0x10f7a) offsets of the file.
Since this is .text, we expect to find executable instructions there. The address we are interested in is 0x401dc0 (.text address) + 0x35e0 (offset of AWAVAUATUSH in the file) - 0x1dc0 (offset of .text in the file) == 0x4035e0.
First, let's check that the above arithmetic is correct:
gdb -q /bin/gzip
(gdb) x/s 0x4035e0
0x4035e0: "AWAVAUATUSH\203\354HdH\213\004%("
Yes, it is. Next, what are the instructions there?
(gdb) x/20i 0x4035e0
0x4035e0: push %r15
0x4035e2: push %r14
0x4035e4: push %r13
0x4035e6: push %r12
0x4035e8: push %rbp
0x4035e9: push %rbx
0x4035ea: sub $0x48,%rsp
0x4035ee: mov %fs:0x28,%rax
0x4035f7: mov %rax,0x38(%rsp)
0x4035fc: xor %eax,%eax
0x4035fe: mov 0x213363(%rip),%rax # 0x616968
0x403605: mov %rdi,(%rsp)
0x403609: mov %rax,0x212cf0(%rip) # 0x616300
0x403610: cmpb $0x7a,(%rax)
0x403613: je 0x403730
0x403619: mov $0x616300,%ebx
0x40361e: mov (%rsp),%rdi
0x403622: callq 0x4019f0 <strlen#plt>
0x403627: cmp $0x20,%eax
0x40362a: mov %rax,0x8(%rsp)
These indeed look like normal executable instructions. What is the opcode of push %r15? This table shows that 0x41, 0x57 is indeed push %r15, and these opcodes just happen to spell AW in ASCII. Similarly, push %r14 is encoded as 0x41, 0x56, which just happens spell AV. Etc.
P.S. My version of gzip is fully stripped, which is why GDB shows no symbols in the above disassembly. If I use a non-stripped version instead, I see:
strings -o -tx gzip | grep AWAVAUATUSH | head -1
6be0 AWAVAUATUSH
readelf -WS gzip | grep text
[13] .text PROGBITS 0000000000401b00 001b00 00d102 00 AX 0 0 16
So the string is still in .text.
gdb -q ./gzip
(gdb) p/a 0x0000000000401b00 + 0x6be0 - 0x001b00
$1 = 0x406be0 <inflate_dynamic>
(gdb) disas/r 0x406be0
Dump of assembler code for function inflate_dynamic:
0x0000000000406be0 <+0>: 41 57 push %r15
0x0000000000406be2 <+2>: 41 56 push %r14
0x0000000000406be4 <+4>: 41 55 push %r13
0x0000000000406be6 <+6>: 41 54 push %r12
0x0000000000406be8 <+8>: 55 push %rbp
0x0000000000406be9 <+9>: 53 push %rbx
0x0000000000406bea <+10>: 48 81 ec 38 05 00 00 sub $0x538,%rsp
...
Now you can clearly see the ASCII 0x4157415641554154... sequence of opcodes.
P.P.S. The original question asks about AWAVAUATSH, which does appear in my Mach-O bash and gzip, but not in Linux ones. Conversely, AWAVAUATUSH does not appear in my Mach-O binaries.
The answer is however the same. The AWAVAUATSH sequence is the same as AWAVAUATUSH, but with push %rbp omitted.
P.P.P.S Here are some other "fun" strings of the same nature:
strings /bin/bash | grep '^A.A.A.' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head
44 AWAVAUATUSH
27 AVAUATUSH
16 AWAVAUA
15 AVAUATUH
14 AWAVAUI
14 AWAVAUATUH
12 AWAVAUATI
8 AWAVAUE1
8 AVAUATI
6 AWAVAUATU