Chemistry of Virtual Memory Space (Part 1)
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I was reading General Chemistry book on the way to my office today and found a nice basic chemical formula representation for processes in memory. In this nomenclature, the class of modules developed by a particular vendor constitutes an ”element”. For example, M is for Microsoft modules, C is for Citrix modules, etc. Individual modules of particular elements are similar to “atoms” and denoted as numbers in subscript. For example, net.exe command running in a typical Citrix terminal services environment has the following loaded modules where I highlighted Citrix modules in blue and Microsoft modules in red:
0:000> lm1m
net
wdmaudhook
tzhook
twnhook
scardhook
mmhook
mfaphook
cxinjime
CtxSbxHook
MPR
NETAPI32
Secur32
USER32
msvcrt
GDI32
RPCRT4
kernel32
ADVAPI32
MSVCR71
ntdll
Therefore the formula is this:
M12C8.
I put the element of the main process module first in such formulae.
The formula for IE process from the following case study:
M126A5U
where A is for Adobe modules and U is for an unknown module that needs identification, see Unknown Component pattern.
These formulas can useful to highlight various hooksware components and distinguish memory dumps generated after eliminating modules for troubleshooting and debugging purposes. It also forms the basis for one of many classificatory schemes for the purposes of micro- and macro-taxonomy of software discussed in the forthcoming book:
The Variety of Software: The Richness of Computation (ISBN: 978-1906717544)
In the forthcoming parts I’m also going to discuss the structural formulas as well, similar to the ones used in organic chemistry.
- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org -
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