README

Overview

This project is a custom emulator/VM, along with tooling such as an assembler, disassembler, and integrated debugger. It was originally written as a challenge for a CTF run by my school’s computer security club. It has been refactored and reorganized. In the future, I may reuse this challenge and modify it, mainly so that it cannot be unintentionally autosolved by the angr framework (as it was in its original form).

For documentation on the assembly language and architecture, consult the relevant file(s) in doc/. * TODO: document assembly language

Documentation

See files in /doc for my design process, VM specs, lessons learned, and other stuff.

Build

Build “normal” competition/prod image (default): $ make

Build trace image (integrates debugger into the build): $ make trace * Note: in-between making the normal and trace images, one should run make cleano to remove previous object files since they’ll differ between normal and trace builds

Build disassembler: $ make disass

Build VM ROM: $ make rom * Note: if one updates the ROM assembly in rom.asm, they’ll need to manually rebuild the ROM.

The assembler, ass.sh, is already good to go (as good as a bad shell-scripted assembler can be at least).

Run

$ ./bin/hard or $ ./bin/hard-trace

depending on which version you wish to run.

Tooling

To use the debugger, simply build and run the trace image, as the binary will automatically place you in the debugger to start.

The assembler, ass.sh, can be used to create a binary ROM image given an assembly language file (file extension .asm) and an optional zero page initialization file (zeropage.incbin in the challenge’s case). The latter if present, is used to initialize the first 256 bytes of ROM to some hardcoded state.

The disassembler, disass, is located in the bin/ directory upon being made.

For usage information for both tools, run them with no arguments.