Decrypting encrypted archives

red
by Eric
Courtesy of fravia's pages of reverse engineering
June 1999

Nice simple c code by Eric to have your own console application (win32 console) that loads a DLL (mwsetup.dll in this case), attaches a pointer to the DLL's function and calls it with your own parameters. Enjoy!
Decrypting Matlab's Encrypted *.Z files


Decrypting encoded files can be done in 2 ways:
1)    Figure out the algorithm.
2)    Use the function supplied by the packer itself.

The first method can be very hard and sometimes impossible, so let's stick to the easiest one...
This example will decrypt matlab 5.2 *.Z files using it own DLLs.

1st step: Obtaining the DLLs.

Browse to /windos/temp dir and delete everything.
Run matlab's setup, and switch to explorer.
Browse to /windos/temp dir and see the new files there (sometimes they'll be under a subdir).
Copy all the files to somewhere safe, as setup will delete them after aborting it.
Exit setup.
Note:
Sometimes the wanted DLLs will have different names, viewing the file will usually reveal their real name.

2nd step: Write a simple program that calls the decrypt function.

A useful tool knowing what functions a DLL can export is borland's tdump utility (ships with almost all borland compilers).
type:
tdump filename.dll > filename.txt
and view the results.
What's we're looking for is the EXPORT section - all the functions that can be imported by external applications.
In mwsetup.dll it looks like:

Exports from mwsetup.dll
  30 exported name(s), 30 export addresse(s).  Ordinal base is 1.
    Ordinal RVA       Name
    ------- --------  ----
    0000    000010a5  AdaMenuPatch
    0001    000010aa  CheckExpDate
    0002    00001064  CreateComponentList
    0003    00001037  CreateStatusWin
    0004    00001041  DecryptArchive :-)
    0005    000010d2  GetChangeInfo
    0006    00001014  GetClusterSize
    0007    00001046  GetExpirationDate
    0008    00001127  GetHelpInfo
    0009    000010e1  GetLicenseNo
    0010    00001023  GetProductIndex
    0011    0000107d  GetProductInfo
    0012    000010c8  GetVolSerno
    0013    000010d7  InstallFlexService
    0014    00001032  InstallSSIService
    0015    0000101e  IntMakeIt
    0016    00001113  IsClasskit
    0017    0000100f  IsDemo
    0018    000010a0  IsDongle
    0019    0000108c  MakeClassKitBanner
    0020    000010f5  MakeIt
    0021    00001109  ModExe
    0022    00001082  ModV4Exe
    0023    000010be  RemoveControlFromDialog
    0024    00001055  ReplaceFileText
    0025    00001104  ReplaceStringText
    0026    000010af  RunningAsAdministrator
    0027    00001005  SetComponentList
    0028    000010dc  SetLicenseNo
    0029    0000105a  SetStatusWinText

The 5th function is called DecryptArchive , we'll want to use this function to decrypt the files for us.
Next, write a simple console application (win32 console) that loads the DLL (mwsetup.dll in this case), attaches a pointer to the DLL's function and calls it with your parameters.
It looks something like this :

//decrypt.cpp
#include<stdio.h>
#include<windows.h>

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
 if (argc != 3) {
  printf("Syntax: Decrypt <infile> <outfile>");
  return 1;
 }
  //declare function pointer
 int (__cdecl *DecryptZ)(char*, char*);
  //load DLL
 HINSTANCE libh=LoadLibrary("mwsetup.dll");
 if (libh==NULL)
 {
  printf("dll not found !");
  return 1;
 }
 //assign decrypt function address to pointer
 DecryptZ=(int(__cdecl *)(char*, char*)) GetProcAddress(libh,"DecryptArchive");
 if (DecryptZ==NULL) {
  printf("Error attaching decrypt function!");
  return 1;
 }
 printf("Decrypting %s\n",argv[1]);
 DecryptZ(argv[1],argv[2]); //decrypt the file
 //unload DLL
 FreeLibrary(libh);
 return 0;
}

The code is so simple, it will take seconds to translate it to pascal or whatever you use.
Put the needed dlls (mwsetup.dll and lmgr325c.dll)  in the same dir as decrypt.exe.
The microsoft api functions can be complicated, so i'll explain them in detail:
The following section is for programmers who are not trained in C/C++.

int (__cdecl *DecryptZ)(char*, char*);

Here I declared a function pointer of a function that looks like:
    int DecryptZ (char *infile, char *outfile);
It gets 2 strings for input and returns an integer.
the __cdecl tells the compiler that the function uses standard C function call (right parameter gets pushed into the stack first).
If __cdecl fails you can try the rest (__fastcall, __stdcall ...).

HINSTANCE libh=LoadLibrary("mwsetup.dll");

Here I declared a handle for the DLL ( a handle is usually an integer).
LoadLibrary is called with the DLL name and returns a handle.

DecryptZ=(int(__cdecl *)(char*, char*)) GetProcAddress(libh,"DecryptArchive");
 
All i do here is get the function address from the DLL using GetProcAddress function.
It gets a handle for the DLL, and the function name.
It returns the address of that function.
A type casting is used so the function types will fit (int(__cdecl *)(char*, char*)).

After all that DecryptZ is actually a function and is called normally.

For comments and questions  write me.

Eric


P.S. Please post here any amelioration / suggestion, thanks.

red

 


red

redhomepage red links red anonymity +ORC redstudents' essays redacademy database redbots wars
redantismut redtools redcocktails redjavascript wars redsearch_forms redmail_fravia
redIs reverse engineering illegal?