readpe v0.8.3 releases: The Portable Executables (PE) file analysis toolkit

by do son · Published October 2, 2018 · Updated November 28, 2023

readpe

readpe is a full-featured, open-source, multiplatform command-line toolkit to work with PE (Portable Executables) binaries.

Use

Getting headers and sections

readpe is the right tool for parsing PE files without inferring anything regarding its fields and values. Using readpe you can see all the basic PE file information. For example, in order to see the Optional Header, you could run:

$ readpe --header optional putty.exe

Optional/Image header

    Magic number:                    0x10b (PE32)

    Linker major version:            7

    Linker minor version:            10

    Size of .text section:           0x5c000

    Size of .data section:           0x27000

    Size of .bss section:            0

    Entrypoint:                      0x54eb0

    Address of .text section:        0x1000

    Address of .data section:        0x5d000

    ImageBase:                       0x400000

    Alignment of sections:           0x1000

    Alignment factor:                0x1000

    Major version of required OS:    4

    Minor version of required OS:    0

    Major version of image:          0

    Minor version of image:          0

    Major version of subsystem:      4

    Minor version of subsystem:      0

    Size of image:                   0x84000

    Size of headers:                 0x1000

    Checksum:                        0

    Subsystem required:              0x2 (IMAGE_SUBSYSTEM_WINDOWS_GUI)

    DLL characteristics:             0

    DLL characteristics names

    Size of stack to reserve:        0x100000

    Size of stack to commit:         0x1000

    Size of heap space to reserve:   0x100000

    Size of heap space to commit:    0x1000

Looking at function directories

readpe can show you the PE data directories with -d option, like this:

$ readpe -d putty.exe

Data directories

    Directory

        IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_IMPORT:    0x78378 (240 bytes)

    Directory

        IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_RESOURCE:  0x80000 (15248 bytes)

    Directory

        IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_LOAD_CONFIG: 0x78318 (72 bytes)

    Directory

        IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_IAT:       0x5d000 (1292 bytes)

If the executable has an import directory you may want to see a list of imported functions with -i / –imports option:

$ readpe -i putty.exe

Imported functions

    Library

        Name:                            ADVAPI32.dll

        Functions

            Function

                Name:                            RegCloseKey

            Function

                Name:                            RegQueryValueExA

            Function

                Name:                            RegOpenKeyA

            Function

                Name:                            GetUserNameA

            Function

                Name:                            EqualSid

            Function

                Name:                            CopySid

    Library

        Name:                            COMCTL32.dll

        Functions

            Function

                Ordinal:                         14

            Function

                Ordinal:                         15

            Function

                Ordinal:                         17

            Function

                Ordinal:                         13

    Library

        Name:                            comdlg32.dll

        Functions

            Function

                Name:                            ChooseColorA

            Function

                Name:                            ChooseFontA

You can see the exported functions as well by using readpe -e / –exports option.

Changelog v0.8.3

Fix 8 character long section names being cut off #196
Various improvements for readpe (thank you again @pali ) #200
Removed all exit() calls from libpe #202
Fix printing section names that are 8 bytes long (regression fix; thank you @gerow ) #203
Add Linux install info to readme (thank you @gemesa ) #204
Remove _FORTIFY_SOURCE definitions (gemesa) #206
Fix and improve tests (gemesa again) #208