Wsock-trace v. 0.3.7:

A drop-in tracing library / DLL for most normal Winsock calls. It sits between your program and the Winsock library (ws2_32.dll). It works best for MSVC since the stack-walking code requires the program's PDB symbol-file to be present. And unfortunately MinGW/CygWin doesn't produce PDB-symbols (GNU-debugger instead relies on the archaic BFD library). So currently, the MinGW and CygWin targets will only show raw addresses for the traced functions.

A MSVC example output from c:\> ahost msdn.com showing all the addresses of msdn.com
(ahost is part of the DNS library C-ares):

Features

• Colourised trace of the Winsock calls with function parameters and return values. The colours are configurable.

• Runtime caller information: Using Microsoft's dbghelp (or psapi) APIs together with the programs PDB-file, the filename, line-number of the calling function-name is shown. In the above example, WSAStartup() is called from ahost.c, line 68. Which should be 53 bytes into the main() function. This should be here.

• Precise Timestamps: All trace-lines starts with a precise timestamp obtained from QueryPerformanceCounter().
  The timestamp is controlled by trace_time in the wsock_trace config-file.

• Extension functions: Winsock has several Microsoft-specific extension functions (like AcceptEx() and ConnectEx()). Wsock-trace is able to trace these too.

• IP-Country information thanks to the MaxMind Lite databases. Thanks to the Tor-project for a simplified CSV version of these MaxMind GeoIP-databases. (using the CSV files GeoIP.csv and GeoIP6.csv are always enabled).

• IP-Location information (City and Region) from IP2Location. The above Mountain View/California is Google's well-known location. Many thanks to IP2Location [3] for their data-bases.

• ASN information (Autonomous System Number) from IPFire.
  The screen-shot above shows Google has ASN 15169 (for their DNS server-address 8.8.8.8).
  More details for that ASN is at DNSlytics and even more details at PeerDB. Many thanks to the IPFire developers [4] for their data-bases.

• Domain Name System-based Blackhole List (DNSBL) support: with the help of DROP-files from the Spamhaus project, it can detect IPv4 / IPv6-addresses uses by spammers and cyber-criminals. The more potent Spamhaus BGPf / BCL is on the to-do list.

• Slowdown; For testing too fast programs, all receive, transmit, select() and WSAPoll() calls can be delayed a number of milli-seconds. E.g. slowing down a recv() call is controlled by recv_delay = 0 in wsock_trace config-file.

• Firewall activity; report activity causing events from the Window Filtering Platform (the Internet Connection Firewall; ICF). See below.

• LuaJIT script support is very preliminary at the moment. The idea is that .lua scripts could change the behaviour of Wsock-trace at runtime without rebuilding it. Only the absolute minimum of the needed files are in ./LuaJIT. Goto here for the complete LuaJIT.

Installation

The following assumes you will install this package in c:\prog\wsock_trace. To clone this repository, do this in an empty c:\prog\wsock_trace directory:

• c:\prog\wsock_trace> git clone https://github.com/gvanem/wsock-trace.git .

To be able to get more precise Geo-IP information for addresses (city and region), Wsock-trace will use a IP2Location LITE database. To make best use of it, do this:

• Sign-up for an account and download a free IP2Location LITE database. Or in case you have an account, go here.
• Download and use a file named like IP2LOCATION-LITE-DBx.IPV6.BIN.
  Such a file contains both IPv4 and IPv6 records. A download-ip2loc.bat like this could do it automatically:

  @echo off
  setlocal
  ::
  :: Fill in this from the login-page
  ::
  if %IP2LOCATION_TOKEN. == . set IP2LOCATION_TOKEN=xxxx
  curl --output IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB11.IPV6.BIN.zip ^
     "https://www.ip2location.com/download/?token=%IP2LOCATION_TOKEN%&file=DB11LITEBINIPV6"
  unzip IP2LOCATION-LITE-DB11.IPV6.BIN.zip
  

• Copy IP2LOCATION-LITE-DBx.IPV6.BIN into your %APPDATA% directory and edit the keyword in the [geoip] section to read:
  ip2location_bin_file = %APPDATA%\IP2LOCATION-LITE-DBx.IPV6.BIN

Note: IP2Location-C-Library is no longer used as a submodule (since I've made several local changes to it). It has been merged into src/ip2loc.c and simplified.

Building

Enter the src sub-directory and do the respective make allcommand.
If the all command succeeded, you can do the respective make install command:

Builder	make allcommand	make install result
CygWin	make -f Makefile.CygWin	cp wsock_trace_cyg*.dll to /usr/bin and cp libwsock_trace_cyg*.a to /usr/lib
MinGW32	make -f Makefile.MinGW	cp wsock_trace_mw.dll to $(MINGW32)/bin and cp libwsock_trace_mw*.a to $(MINGW32)/lib
MSVC	nmake -f makefile.vc6	copy wsock_trace*.dll to %VCINSTALLDIR%\bin and copy wsock_trace.lib to %VCINSTALLDIR%\lib

Notes:

• For a WIN32 build, the above files will have an -x86 suffix.
• For a WIN64 build, the above files will have an -x64 suffix.
• And for a USE_CRT_DEBUG = 1 build, the above files will have an extra _d suffix.
• So for a MinGW, WIN64 debug-build, the files are named wsock_trace_mw_d-x64.dll and libwsock_trace_mw_d-x64.a.

Usage

Link with one of these libraries (instead of the default libws32_2.a or ws2_32.lib):

Builder	Platform	Library
CygWin	x86	libwsock_trace_cyg-x86.a
CygWin	x64	libwsock_trace_cyg-x64.a
MinGW	x86	libwsock_trace_mw-x86.a
MinGW	x64	libwsock_trace_mw-x64.a
MSVC	x86	wsock_trace-x86.lib
MSVC	x64	wsock_trace-x64.lib

Thus most normal Winsock calls are traced on entry and exit.

Example screen-shot above or details in Running samples below.

MSVC: Remember to compile using -Zi to produce debug-symbols. For MSVC-2015 (or newer) it is recomended to use option -Zo too (which will eases the debug of optimised code. And remember to use -debug when linking your program. See src/Makefile.vc6 for an example. It is not adviced to use option -Oy (enable frame pointer omission) since that will make it difficult for StackWalk64() to figure out the filename and line of the calling function.

Configuration

The trace-level and other settings are controlled by a config-file wsock_trace. This file is searched along these places until found:

• The file pointed to by %WSOCK_TRACE.
• The current directory.
• Then finally the %APPDATA% directory.

wsock_trace is read in init.c at startup. Read it's contents; the comments therein should be self-explanatory.
If wsock_trace is not found in one of the above directories, the default trace_level is set to 1.

There is currently no install.bat file for Wsock-trace. So you should copy the following files (here at GitHub)
to your %APPDATA% directory:

  wsock_trace
  GeoIP.csv
  GeoIP6.csv
  GeoIPASNum.csv
  IPv4-address-space.csv
  IPv6-unicast-address-assignments.csv
  DROP.txt
  EDROP.txt
  DROPv6.txt
  IPFire-database.db

These environment variables are on the form:

• <drive>:\Documents and Settings\<User Name>\ProgramData. (Win-XP)
• <drive>:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Roaming. (Win-Vista+)

Running samples

All the below samples uses these %APPDATA%/wsock_trace settings:

• compact = 1
• trace_time = none and
• use_short_path = 1.

Example output from src/ws_tool.exe test (built with MSVC):

  * ws_trace/test.c(45) (main+50):              WSAStartup (2.2) --> No error.
  * ws_trace/test.c(24) (do_wsock_tests+125):   gethostbyaddr (127.0.0.1, 4, AF_INET) --> 0x003C8780.
  * ws_trace/test.c(27) (do_wsock_tests+150):   gethostbyaddr (0.0.0.0, 4, AF_INET) --> 0x003C8780.
  * ws_trace/test.c(29) (do_wsock_tests+164):   gethostbyaddr (::1, 16, AF_INET6) --> 0x003C8780.
  * ws_trace/test.c(31) (do_wsock_tests+175):   gethostbyname (localhost) --> 0x003C8780.
  * ws_trace/test.c(31) (do_wsock_tests+187):   socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0) --> 1724.
  * ws_trace/test.c(33) (do_wsock_tests+196):   WSAGetLastError() --> No error.
  * ws_trace/test.c(36) (do_wsock_tests+343):   select (n=0-1724, rd, NULL, NULL, {tv=1.000001s}) --> No error.
  * ws_trace/test.c(37) (do_wsock_tests+358):   FD_ISSET (1724, fd) --> 0.
  * ws_trace/test.c(47) (main+61):              WSACleanup() --> No error.
    ^                ^   ^                      ^
    |                |   |                      |___ The traced Winsock function and the result.
    |                |   |
    |                |   |____ The calling function with displacement (i.e. offset from
    |                |                                          (nearest public symbol).
    |                |_____ Line number in src-file.
    |
    |____ Source-file relative of the application.

Here is a more realistic and useful example with wsock_trace.lib linked to Nmap [1]:

  c:\> nmap -sT -P0 -p23,80 10.0.0.1
     * mswin32/winfix.cc(134) (win_pre_init+68):   WSAStartup (2.2) --> No error.

    Starting Nmap 6.02 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2012-07-24 12:48 CET
      * g:/vc_2010/sdk/include/wspiapi.h(1011) (WspiapiGetAddrInfo+79):   WSASetLastError (0).
      * g:/vc_2010/sdk/include/wspiapi.h(1011) (WspiapiGetAddrInfo+79):   WSASetLastError (0).
      * g:/vc_2010/sdk/include/wspiapi.h(1011) (WspiapiGetAddrInfo+79):   WSASetLastError (0).
      * g:/vc_2010/sdk/include/wspiapi.h(1011) (WspiapiGetAddrInfo+79):   WSASetLastError (0).
      * g:/vc_2010/sdk/include/wspiapi.h(1011) (WspiapiGetAddrInfo+79):   WSASetLastError (0).
      * g:/vc_2010/sdk/include/wspiapi.h(1011) (WspiapiGetAddrInfo+79):   WSASetLastError (0).
      * scan_engine.cc(3002) (sendConnectScanProbe+266):   socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 6) --> 1780.
      * nbase/nbase_misc.c(261) (unblock_socket+65):   ioctlsocket (1780, FIONBIO, 1) --> No error.
      * scan_engine.cc(2964) (init_socket+82):   setsockopt (1780, SOL_SOCKET, SO_LINGER, 1, 4) --> No error.
      * libnetutil/netutil.cc(856) (set_ttl+34):   setsockopt (1780, IPPROTO_IP, IP_TTL, ULONG_MAX, 4) --> WSAEINVAL: Invalid arguments (10022).
      * scan_engine.cc(3021) (sendConnectScanProbe+599):   connect (1780, 10.0.0.1:23) --> WSAEWOULDBLOCK: Call would block (10035).
      * nbase/nbase_misc.c(133) (socket_errno+12):   WSAGetLastError() --> WSAEWOULDBLOCK: Call would block (10035).
      * scan_engine.cc(922) (ConnectScanInfo::watchSD+82):   FD_ISSET (1780, fd) --> 0.
      * scan_engine.cc(3002) (sendConnectScanProbe+266):   socket (AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 6) --> 1720.
      * nbase/nbase_misc.c(261) (unblock_socket+65):   ioctlsocket (1720, FIONBIO, 1) --> No error.
      * scan_engine.cc(2964) (init_socket+82):   setsockopt (1720, SOL_SOCKET, SO_LINGER, 1, 4) --> No error.
      * libnetutil/netutil.cc(856) (set_ttl+34):   setsockopt (1720, IPPROTO_IP, IP_TTL, ULONG_MAX, 4) --> WSAEINVAL: Invalid arguments (10022).
      * scan_engine.cc(3021) (sendConnectScanProbe+599):   connect (1720, 10.0.0.1:80) --> WSAEWOULDBLOCK: Call would block (10035).
      * nbase/nbase_misc.c(133) (socket_errno+12):   WSAGetLastError() --> WSAEWOULDBLOCK: Call would block (10035).
      * scan_engine.cc(922) (ConnectScanInfo::watchSD+82):   FD_ISSET (1720, fd) --> 0.
      * scan_engine.cc(3964) (do_one_select_round+473):   select (n=0-1780, rd, wr, ex, {tv=0.985000s}) --> 3.
      * nbase/nbase_misc.c(133) (socket_errno+12):   WSAGetLastError() --> WSAEWOULDBLOCK: Call would block (10035).
      * scan_engine.cc(4015) (do_one_select_round+1894):   FD_ISSET (1720, fd) --> 0.
      * scan_engine.cc(4015) (do_one_select_round+1917):   FD_ISSET (1720, fd) --> 1.
      * scan_engine.cc(4019) (do_one_select_round+2012):   getsockopt (1720, SOL_SOCKET, SO_ERROR, 0, 4) --> No error.
      * scan_engine.cc(938) (ConnectScanInfo::clearSD+82):   FD_ISSET (1720, fd) --> 1.
      * scan_engine.cc(789) (ConnectProbe::~ConnectProbe+37):   closesocket (1720) --> No error.
      * scan_engine.cc(4015) (do_one_select_round+1894):   FD_ISSET (1780, fd) --> 1.
      * scan_engine.cc(4019) (do_one_select_round+2012):   getsockopt (1780, SOL_SOCKET, SO_ERROR, 0, 4) --> No error.
      * scan_engine.cc(938) (ConnectScanInfo::clearSD+82):   FD_ISSET (1780, fd) --> 1.
      * scan_engine.cc(789) (ConnectProbe::~ConnectProbe+37):   closesocket (1780) --> No error.
    Nmap scan report for router (10.0.0.1)
    Host is up (0.0019s latency).
    PORT   STATE SERVICE
    23/tcp open  telnet
    80/tcp open  http

    Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 7.61 seconds
      * mswin32/winfix.cc(290) (win_cleanup+12):   WSACleanup() --> No error.

Notes:

• Nmap uses wrong arguments to setsockopt(); a TTL of ULONG_MAX.
• Nmap also calls WSAStartup() before the startup message.
• Notice how Wsock-trace handles (demangles) C++ symbols just fine thanks to dbghelp.dll and UnDecorateSymbolName(). I.e. the destructor ConnectProbe::~ConnectProbe above is calling closesocket() at offset 37. (you can turn off C++ demangling by cpp_demangle = 0 in the wsock_trace config-file).
• Even symbols from a Rust library can be demangled. E.g. from rustls-ffi as used in libcurl:

  * 1.807833 sec: f:/MingW32/src/inet/Crypto/Rustls/src/io.rs(44) (rustls_ffi::io::impl$0::read+32)
    WSAGetLastError() --> WSAEWOULDBLOCK (10035).
  

  This Rust function rustls_ffi::io::impl$0::read should be here.

Another example from C-ares's adig.c with the same settings as above:

    c:\> adig -t PTR 89.42.216.144
      * adig.c(216) (main+105):   WSAStartup (2.2) --> No error.
      * ares_process.c(1065) (open_udp_socket+248):   socket (AF_INET, SOCK_DGRAM, 0) --> 1604.
      * ares_process.c(857) (setsocknonblock+61):   ioctlsocket (1604, FIONBIO, 1) --> No error.
      * ares_process.c(1077) (open_udp_socket+345):   connect (1604, 8.8.8.8:53) --> No error.
      * ares_process.c(791) (ares__send_query+484):   send (1604, 0x00034BDA, 31, 0) --> 31 bytes tx.
      * adig.c(397) (main+1780):   select (n=0-1604, rd, wr, NULL, {tv=3.109000s}) --> 1.
      * ares_process.c(456) (read_udp_packets+146):   FD_ISSET (1604, fd) --> 1.
      * ares_process.c(485) (read_udp_packets+413):   recvfrom (1604, 0x0013F894, 513, 0, 8.8.8.8:53) --> 106 bytes rx.
    Domain name not found
    id: 58187
    flags: qr rd ra
    opcode: QUERY
    rcode: NXDOMAIN
    Questions:
            89.42.216.144  .                PTR
    Answers:
    NS records:
                           .        1413    SOA     a.root-servers.net.
                                                    nstld.verisign-grs.com.
                                                    ( 2012072400 1800 900 604800 86400 )
    Additional records:
      * ares__close_sockets.c(63) (ares__close_sockets+408):   closesocket (1604) --> No error.
      * adig.c(411) (main+1894):   WSACleanup() --> No error.

By default, the tracing of htons(),htonl(), ntohs() and ntohl() are excluded from the trace.
You can edit the %APPDATA%/wsock_trace config-file and exclude whatever calls you like. And the 2 traces above is showing the effect of the config-value compact = 1.

A more eleborated example from 2 OpenVPN programs; a client and a server running a simple test (in OpenVPN's root-dir). Started with the vpn.bat snippet:

cd sample
start /pos=200,50,1000,800   ..\openvpn.exe --config sample-config-files/loopback-server
start /pos=800,150,1000,1000 ..\openvpn.exe --config sample-config-files/loopback-client

:

A Larger version.

Firewall Monitor

The ws_tool.exe firewall program show a screen like:

Together with [DNSBL], enable = 1 it shows remote addresses in SpamHaus DROP-lists. In this case the address 176.119.4.56 in Ukraine / Donetsk is very active giving a Firewall event approximately every 5 minutes.

A good test of the firewall.c features is to open up your router (create a DMZ) and start a remote port-scan while ws_tool.exe firewall is running. You'll see a lot of DROP-events like:

6.700 sec: FWPM_NET_EVENT_TYPE_CLASSIFY_DROP, IN, IPPROTO_TCP
  layer:   (13) Inbound Transport v4 Discard-layer
  filter:  (277599) Filter to prevent port-scanning
  addr:    204.11.35.98 -> 10.0.0.10, ports: 21 (ftp) / 52115
  country: United States, Troy/Michigan

Implementation notes

The names of the import libraries and the names of the 32-bit .DLLs are:

• For MSVC: wsock_trace.lib and wsock_trace-x86.dll .
• For MinGW: libwsock_trace.a and wsock_trace_mw-x86.dll .
• For CygWin32: libwsock_trace.a and wsock_trace_cyg-x86.dll.

And the 64-bit equivalents:

• For MSVC: wsock_trace_x64.lib and wsock_trace-x64.dll .
• For MinGW: libwsock_trace_x64.a and wsock_trace_mw-x64.dll .
• For CygWin64: libwsock_trace_x64.a and wsock_trace_cyg-x64.dll.

These DLLs off-course needs to be in current directory or on %PATH. The reason I've chosen to make it a DLL and not a static-lib is that applications using wsock_trace*.lib needs not to be re-linked when I do change the inner workings of the Wsock-trace source code. As long as the ABI is stable (e.g. not adding new functions to the wsock_trace-x86.def file), the application using wsock_trace*.dll should work the same.

Note that some virus scanners may find the behaviour of programs linked to wsock_trace.lib suspicious.

Future plans:

1. Get the decoding of calling function, file-name and lines in the MinGW/CygWin ports working.

2. LuaJIT-script integration; use a *.lua file to exclude/include processes and/or functions to trace.

3. Injecting wsock_trace-*.dll into a remote process. Ref: https://www.viksoe.dk/code/wepmetering.htm.

4. Optionally load Wireshark's libwireshark.dll to dissect transport and application protocols.
   Do it for selected processes only.

5. Deny certain applications to use AF_INET6 protocols (return -1 on socket(AF_INET6,...)).

6. Make it possible to switch network stacks at run-time: select amongst Winsock2, lwIP, SwsSock and/or
   Cyclone TCP.

7. Make a GUI trace viewer for it. Ref: https://www.viksoe.dk/code/windowless1.htm

8. Add a Json type config feature to support the above features. E.g.:

   wireshark_dissect {
     wget.exe : 1    # Wireshark dissection in wget and curl only.
     curl.exe : 1
   }
   
   exclude_trace {
     select:    [curl.exe, wget.exe]  # Exclude trace of `select()` and `inet_ntoa()` in curl/wget.
     inet_ntoa: [curl.exe, wget.exe]
     htons:     [ * ]    # Exclude trace of `htons` globally.
   }
   
   deny_ipv6 {
     pycurl.pyd : 1     # Deny AF_INET6 sockets in scripts using the PyCurl module.
     python27.dll : 1   # And in other Python scripts too.
   
   }
   
   stack_mux {
     use_lwip: [wget2.exe, curl.exe]  # Force wget2.exe and curl.exe to use lwIP.dll
   }
   

---

G. Vanem <[email protected]> 2013 - 2023.

Footnotes:

• [1] Nmap; "Network Mapper" is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing.
  Ref. https://nmap.org/download.html

• [2] A C library for asynchronous DNS requests (including name resolves)
  Ref. https://c-ares.haxx.se/

• [3] This product includes IP2Location LITE data available from https://lite.ip2location.com.

• [4] This product includes IPFire location and ASN data available from https://location.ipfire.org/databases/1/.

PS. This file is written with the aid of the Atom editor and it's Markdown-Preview. A real time-saver.