How to use the ObjDump tool with x86

Having access to an analysis tool when dealing with compiled executables is always useful. In Linux, ObjDump is one such tool, which can be used to extract information from object files.

This article provides an overview of various ObjDump command-line options and their use. We will take a simple Hello World program written in x86 assembly as our target program and run ObjDump against it.

See the next previous in the series, Debugging your first x86 program.

Intro to x86 Disassembly

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What is ObjDump?

As mentioned at the beginning of the article, ObjDump is a useful utility to extract information from object files. This tool comes pre-installed with the majority of the Linux distributions. Following are the help options available when running ObjDump.

$ objdump

Usage: objdump <option(s)> <file(s)>

Display information from object <file(s)>.

At least one of the following switches must be given:

-a, --archive-headers    Display archive header information

-f, --file-headers       Display the contents of the overall file header

-p, --private-headers    Display object format specific file header contents

-P, --private=OPT,OPT... Display object format specific contents

-h, --[section-]headers  Display the contents of the section headers

-x, --all-headers        Display the contents of all headers

-d, --disassemble        Display assembler contents of executable sections

-D, --disassemble-all    Display assembler contents of all sections

--disassemble=<sym>  Display assembler contents from <sym>

-S, --source             Intermix source code with disassembly

--source-comment[=<txt>] Prefix lines of source code with <txt>

-s, --full-contents      Display the full contents of all sections requested

-g, --debugging          Display debug information in object file

-e, --debugging-tags     Display debug information using ctags style

-G, --stabs              Display (in raw form) any STABS info in the file

-W[lLiaprmfFsoRtUuTgAckK] or

--dwarf[=rawline,=decodedline,=info,=abbrev,=pubnames,=aranges,=macro,=frames,

=frames-interp,=str,=loc,=Ranges,=pubtypes,

=gdb_index,=trace_info,=trace_abbrev,=trace_aranges,

=addr,=cu_index,=links,=follow-links]

Display DWARF info in the file

--ctf=SECTION            Display CTF info from SECTION

-t, --syms               Display the contents of the symbol table(s)

-T, --dynamic-syms       Display the contents of the dynamic symbol table

-r, --reloc              Display the relocation entries in the file

-R, --dynamic-reloc      Display the dynamic relocation entries in the file

@<file>                  Read options from <file>

-v, --version            Display this program's version number

-i, --info               List object formats and architectures supported

-H, --help               Display this information

How to extract assembly code

ObjDump tool can be used to extract assembly code from an already-built binary. Let us begin by going through the following assembly program to better understand the approach that can be used.

helloworld.nasm

section .text

global _start

_start:

mov edx,len

mov ecx,msg

mov ebx,1

mov eax,4

int 0x80

mov eax, 1

mov ebx, 0

int 0x80

section .rodata

msg db  'Hello, world!',0xa

len equ $ - msg

As we can notice in the preceding program, the assembly code is written in the .text section. So, we can use ObjDump to extract the .text section from the object file produced by the assembler. It is also possible to extract other sections such as .rodata. In the next few sections, we will discuss how this can be done.

Displaying header contents using ObjDump

To display the header contents from a binary, we can use the -x flag as shown below.

$ objdump -x helloworld

helloworld:     file format elf32-i386

helloworld

architecture: i386, flags 0x00000112:

EXEC_P, HAS_SYMS, D_PAGED

start address 0x08049000

Program Header:

LOAD off    0x00000000 vaddr 0x08048000 paddr 0x08048000 align 2**12

filesz 0x00000094 memsz 0x00000094 flags r--

LOAD off    0x00001000 vaddr 0x08049000 paddr 0x08049000 align 2**12

filesz 0x00000022 memsz 0x00000022 flags r-x

LOAD off    0x00002000 vaddr 0x0804a000 paddr 0x0804a000 align 2**12

filesz 0x0000000e memsz 0x0000000e flags r--

Sections:

Idx Name          Size      VMA       LMA       File off  Algn

0 .text         00000022  08049000  08049000  00001000  2**4

CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE

1 .rodata       0000000e  0804a000  0804a000  00002000  2**2

CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA

SYMBOL TABLE:

08049000 l    d  .text 00000000 .text

0804a000 l    d  .rodata 00000000 .rodata

00000000 l    df *ABS* 00000000 helloworld.nasm

0804a000 l       .rodata 00000000 msg

0000000e l       *ABS* 00000000 len

08049000 g       .text 00000000 _start

0804b00e g       .rodata 00000000 __bss_start

0804b00e g       .rodata 00000000 _edata

0804b010 g       .rodata 00000000 _end

As mentioned earlier, we used the Hello World program as our target. The preceding output shows the header information extracted. This includes the metadata of the elf binary (with the details such as file format, architecture), program header, sections available in the binary(.text, .rodata) and the symbol table.

Displaying assembler contents of executable sections using ObjDump

As discussed earlier, we can use the .text section to dump the assembly code from a pre-built binary. This can be done using the -d flag as shown in the following excerpt.

Assembler contents from text section:

$ objdump -d helloworld

helloworld:     file format elf32-i386

Disassembly of section .text:

08049000 <_start>:

8049000: ba 0e 00 00 00       mov    $0xe,%edx

8049005: b9 00 a0 04 08       mov    $0x804a000,%ecx

804900a: bb 01 00 00 00       mov    $0x1,%ebx

804900f: b8 04 00 00 00       mov    $0x4,%eax

8049014: cd 80                int    $0x80

8049016: b8 01 00 00 00       mov    $0x1,%eax

804901b: bb 00 00 00 00       mov    $0x0,%ebx

8049020: cd 80                int    $0x80

As we can see in the preceding excerpt, the assembly code is shown but it is in AT&T syntax. It is also possible to control the output syntax. This can be done using the flag -M as shown below.

Assembler contents from text section in intel assembly syntax:

$ objdump -d helloworld -M intel

helloworld:     file format elf32-i386

Disassembly of section .text:

08049000 <_start>:

8049000: ba 0e 00 00 00       mov    edx,0xe

8049005: b9 00 a0 04 08       mov    ecx,0x804a000

804900a: bb 01 00 00 00       mov    ebx,0x1

804900f: b8 04 00 00 00       mov    eax,0x4

8049014: cd 80                int    0x80

8049016: b8 01 00 00 00       mov    eax,0x1

804901b: bb 00 00 00 00       mov    ebx,0x0

8049020: cd 80                int    0x80

As we can observe, the output is now in intel syntax. Similarly, if we want to explicitly display the assembly code in AT&T syntax, it can be done as follows.

Assembler contents from text section  in AT&T assembly syntax:

$ objdump -d helloworld -M att

helloworld:     file format elf32-i386

Disassembly of section .text:

08049000 <_start>:

8049000: ba 0e 00 00 00       mov    $0xe,%edx

8049005: b9 00 a0 04 08       mov    $0x804a000,%ecx

804900a: bb 01 00 00 00       mov    $0x1,%ebx

804900f: b8 04 00 00 00       mov    $0x4,%eax

8049014: cd 80                int    $0x80

8049016: b8 01 00 00 00       mov    $0x1,%eax

804901b: bb 00 00 00 00       mov    $0x0,%ebx

8049020: cd 80                int    $0x80

If we want to display assembler code from all sections, we can use the -D flag.

Assembler contents from all sections in intel assembly syntax:

$ objdump -D helloworld -M intel

helloworld:     file format elf32-i386

Disassembly of section .text:

08049000 <_start>:

8049000: ba 0e 00 00 00       mov    edx,0xe

8049005: b9 00 a0 04 08       mov    ecx,0x804a000

804900a: bb 01 00 00 00       mov    ebx,0x1

804900f: b8 04 00 00 00       mov    eax,0x4

8049014: cd 80                int    0x80

8049016: b8 01 00 00 00       mov    eax,0x1

804901b: bb 00 00 00 00       mov    ebx,0x0

8049020: cd 80                int    0x80

Disassembly of section .rodata:

0804a000 <msg>:

804a000: 48                   dec    eax

804a001: 65 6c                gs ins BYTE PTR es:[edi],dx

804a003: 6c                   ins    BYTE PTR es:[edi],dx

804a004: 6f                   outs   dx,DWORD PTR ds:[esi]

804a005: 2c 20                sub    al,0x20

804a007: 77 6f                ja     804a078 <msg+0x78>

804a009: 72 6c                jb     804a077 <msg+0x77>

804a00b: 64 21 0a             and    DWORD PTR fs:[edx],ecx

Similarly, we can extract assembler contents using ObjDump in AT&T syntax.

Displaying debug information using ObjDump

We can use the -g flag of ObjDump to display the debug information from a binary. The following excerpt shows the output from a compiled C Program.

$ objdump -g jump

jump:     file format elf64-x86-64

Contents of the .eh_frame section (loaded from jump):

00000000 0000000000000014 00000000 CIE

Version:               1

Augmentation:          "zR"

Code alignment factor: 1

Data alignment factor: -8

Return address column: 16

Augmentation data:     1b

DW_CFA_def_cfa: r7 (rsp) ofs 8

DW_CFA_offset: r16 (rip) at cfa-8

DW_CFA_nop

DW_CFA_nop

[REDACTED FOR BREVITY]

Displaying contents of the symbol table using ObjDump

According to Oracle docs, "The symbol table contains information to locate and relocate symbolic definitions and references. The assembler creates the symbol table section for the object file. It makes an entry in the symbol table for each symbol that is defined or referenced in the input file and is needed during linking. The symbol table is then used by the link editor during relocation".

ObjDump’s -t flag can be used to display the Symbol table from an executable.

$ objdump -t helloworld -M intel

helloworld:     file format elf32-i386

SYMBOL TABLE:

08049000 l    d  .text 00000000 .text

0804a000 l    d  .rodata 00000000 .rodata

00000000 l    df *ABS* 00000000 helloworld.nasm

0804a000 l       .rodata 00000000 msg

0000000e l       *ABS* 00000000 len

08049000 g       .text 00000000 _start

0804b00e g       .rodata 00000000 __bss_start

0804b00e g       .rodata 00000000 _edata

0804b010 g       .rodata 00000000 _end

As we can observe in the preceding excerpt, each symbol used in the program is referenced in the symbol table.

See the next article in the series, How to diagnose and locate segmentation faults in x86 assembly.

Intro to x86 Disassembly

Build your x86 assembly skills with six courses covering the basics of computer architecture, how to build and debug x86, x86 assembly instructions and more.

Start Learning

Sources

• Symbol tables, Oracle
• Assembly Language for x86 Processors, Kip Irvine
• Modern X86 Assembly Language Programming, Daniel Kusswurm
• Linux Assembly Language Programming, Bob Neveln