elf-strings

The better strings utility for the reverse engineer.

elf-strings will programmatically read an ELF binary's string sections within a given binary. This is meant to be much like the strings UNIX utility, however is purpose built for ELF binaries.

This means that you can get suitable information about the strings within the binary, such as the section they reside in, the offset in the section, etc.. This utility also has the functionality to 'demangle' C++ symbols, iterate linked libraries and print basic information about the ELF.

This can prove extremely useful for quickly grabbing strings when analysing a binary.

Output

Building

git clone https://github.com/LloydLabs/elf-strings
cd elf-strings
go build

Arguments

-binary string
    	the path to the ELF you wish to parse
  -demangle
    	demangle C++ symbols into their original source identifiers, prettify found C++ symbols (optional)
  -hex
    	output the strings as a hexadecimal literal (optional)
  -libs
    	show the linked libraries in the binary (optional)
  -max-count uint
    	the maximum amount of strings that you wish to be output (optional)
  -min uint
    	the minimum length of the string
  -no-color
    	disable color output in the results
  -no-human
    	don't validate that its a human readable string, this could increase the amount of junk.
  -no-info
    	don't show any information about the binary
  -no-trim
    	disable triming whitespace and trailing newlines
  -offset
    	show the offset of the string in the section (default, recommended) (default true)
  -output-file string
    	the path of the output file that you want to output to (optional)
  -output-format string
    	the format you want to output as (optional, plain/json/xml) (default "plain")

Example

An example grabbing the strings from the echo utility.

./elf-strings --binary=/bin/echo --min=4 --max-count=10

[+] Size: 31 kB
[+] Arch: x86_64
[+] Entry point: 0x401800
[+] Class: ELFCLASS64
[+] Byte order: LittleEndian

[.dynstr+0x0]: libc.so.6
[.dynstr+0xa]: fflush
[.dynstr+0x11]: __printf_chk
[.dynstr+0x1e]: setlocale
[.dynstr+0x28]: mbrtowc
[.dynstr+0x30]: strncmp
[.dynstr+0x38]: strrchr
[.dynstr+0x40]: dcgettext
[.dynstr+0x4a]: error
[.dynstr+0x50]: __stack_chk_fail