Obscuring Control Flow

Created the Monday 18 March 2019. Updated 5 months, 4 weeks ago.

Obscuring control flow is an anti-disassembling technique that involves using methods of flow control that are difficult or impossible for disassemblers and debuggers to follow. This can make it more difficult for analysts to understand the program's behavior and can also make it more difficult for other tools, such as debuggers, to accurately interpret the program.

One example of this technique is the use of the Structure Exception Handling (SEH) mechanism in the Microsoft Windows operating system. SEH provides a way to handle exceptions, which are runtime errors that occur during the execution of a program. It allows the programmer to define a set of exception handlers that are called whenever an exception occurs. These exception handlers can be used to handle the exception and continue the program's execution, or to log the error and terminate the program.

SEH provides a method of flow control that is difficult for disassemblers and debuggers to follow, because the exception handlers are not part of the program's normal control flow. Disassemblers and debuggers are not able to accurately reconstruct the program's original instructions when SEH is used, because they cannot determine the intended behavior of the program without actually executing it.



Code Snippets

Contributors

Additional Resources

External Links

The resources provided below are associated links that will give you even more detailed information and research on current evasion technique. It is important to note that, while these resources may be helpful, it is important to exercise caution when following external links. As always, be careful when clicking on links from unknown sources, as they may lead to malicious content.

Subscribe to our Newsletter


The information entered into this form is mandatory. It will be subjected to computer processing. It is processed by computer in order to support our users and readers. The recipients of the data will be : contact@unprotect.it.

According to the Data Protection Act of January 6th, 1978, you have at any time, a right of access to and rectification of all of your personal data. If you wish to exercise this right and gain access to your personal data, please write to Thomas Roccia at contact@unprotect.it.

You may also oppose, for legitimate reasons, the processing of your personal data.