snapshot

<strong>A Rust WinDbg extension that takes a snapshot of a running VM.</strong>






<img src='https://github.com/0vercl0k/snapshot/workflows/Builds/badge.svg'/>






<img src='pics/snapshot.gif' />

snapshot is a WinDbg extension written in Rust that dumps both the state of a CPU (GPRs, relevant MSRs, FPU state, segments, etc.) and the physical memory of a running VM (via a crash-dump). This snapshot is meant to be used by snapshot-based fuzzers and more particularly by wtf.

This code base is also meant to show case how to write a WinDbg extension in Rust 🦀.

Building

You can build the extension with the below:

c:\>git clone https://github.com/0vercl0k/snapshot.git
c:\>cd snapshot
c:\snapshot>cargo build --release

If you would rather grab a pre-built extension, grab one on the releases page.

Grabbing a snapshot

Once you have the extension downloaded / compiled, you can load it in WinDbg with the below:

kd> .load \path\to\snapshot\target\release\snapshot.dll

kd> !snapshot -h
[snapshot] Usage: snapshot [OPTIONS] [STATE_PATH]

Arguments:
  [STATE_PATH]  The path to save the snapshot to

Options:
  -k, --kind <KIND>  The kind of snapshot to take [default: full] [possible values: active-kernel, full]
  -h, --help         Print help

Generate a full-kernel snapshot in the c:\foo directory with the below:

kd> !snapshot c:\foo
[snapshot] Dumping the CPU state into c:\foo\state.19041.1.amd64fre.vb_release.191206-1406.20240205_173527\regs.json..
[snapshot] Dumping the memory state into c:\foo\state.19041.1.amd64fre.vb_release.191206-1406.20240205_173527\mem.dmp..
Creating c:\\foo\\state.19041.1.amd64fre.vb_release.191206-1406.20240205_173527\\mem.dmp - Full memory range dump
0% written.
5% written. 1 min 12 sec remaining.
10% written. 1 min 4 sec remaining.
[...]
90% written. 6 sec remaining.
95% written. 3 sec remaining.
Wrote 4.0 GB in 1 min 11 sec.
The average transfer rate was 57.7 MB/s.
Dump successfully written
[snapshot] Done!

There is also !snapshot_active_kernel if you would prefer to grab an active kernel crash-dump.