Windows NT class for direct memory access

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Introduction

I've always wondered how debuggers could read and edit the memory of ordinary programs. I used to think it was a complicated process and that it involved low-level programming techniques. Much to my disappointment, I couldn't find any articles covering this subject.

After some research (and asking around on the boards) I found it's possible to read the memory of processes by calling a few Win32 APIs. It only works under WinNT with admin access, though.

How does the class work?

Basically, there are two things that need to be done in order to get full memory access.

• Getting the Process ID of the program that needs debugging. This can be easily achieved using GetWindowThreadProcessId(hWnd, The_Process_ID)

• Opening the process :

  handle_to_Process = OpenProcess(PROCESS_VM_READ
              |PROCESS_VM_WRITE|     
              PROCESS_VM_OPERATION    
              |PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION, 
              FALSE, The_Process_ID);

Reading and writing to the memory

Now we have a handle to an opened process, we can write and read at will.

DWORD iAddress = 0x234343;
DWORD dummy;
int value;

if (!ReadProcessMemory(handle_to_Process    // handle to the process whose
                                            // memory is read
        ,(void*) iAddress,     // address to start reading
        (void*) &value,        // address of buffer to place read data
        sizeof(value)          // number of bytes to read
        ,&dummy))              // address of number of bytes read
{
    m_sError = _T("Failed to read memory.");
    return FALSE;
}

The last parameter doesn't contain valuable information. It can be used to check how many bytes are actually written into the memory, but if one uses fixed sized variables there's nothing that can go wrong.

The CProcessMem class

This class makes editing memory even easier, it has the following functions:

bool InitModule (HWND hWnd);        // Hook to a process identified by a hWnd
bool InitModule (DWORD processID);       // Or you can just use the pID
bool InitModule (CString wndTitle);      // And the easiest way, the window text.

bool ReadVal    (DWORD iAddress, BYTE &value);
bool WriteVal    (DWORD iAddress, BYTE value);

bool ReadVal    (DWORD iAddress, short int &value);
bool WriteVal    (DWORD iAddress, short int value);

bool ReadVal    (DWORD iAddress, int &value);
bool WriteVal    (DWORD iAddress, int value);

bool ReadVal    (DWORD iAddress, CString &text);
bool WriteVal    (DWORD iAddress, CString text);

At the moment there is no support for searching within the virtual memory. It can be done fairly easily with QueryVirtualEx() though.

Notes:

• All functions return a boolean value. If a function returns FALSE, then you can get a more specific error message by checking CProcessMem::m_sError
• The ProcessInfo structure contains information on the process. For instance: After you ran CProcessMem::InitModule("A window Caption") you can get the process ID by checking CProcessMem::ProcessInfo.pID
• Although I'm fairly sure this code works well, don't be surprised to find a bug. If you do, please contact me.
• I hope somebody finds this class useful.