RABCDAsm is a collection of utilities including an ActionScript 3 assembler/disassembler, and a few tools to manipulate SWF files. These are:
rabcdasm
- ABC disassemblerrabcasm
- ABC assemblerabcexport
- extracts ABC from SWF filesabcreplace
- replaces ABC in SWF filesswfdecompress
- decompresses zlib-compressed SWF filesswf7zcompress
- (re-)compress the contents of a SWF using 7-Zipswflzmacompress
- compress the contents of a SWF using LZMAswfbinexport
/swfbinreplace
- extract/replace contents of binary data tags from SWF files
abcexport
and abcreplace
are reimplementations of similar utilities from
my swfutilsex Java package, however these work faster as they do not parse
the SWF files as deeply.
swfdecompress
is ancillary and is only useful for debugging and studying of
the SWF file format, and not required for ABC manipulation. It is functionally
equivalent to flasm's -x
option. If you frequently work on compressed
SWF files, you may want to decompress them to speed processing up.
swf7zcompress
is an utility to further reduce the size of SWF files. It uses
7-Zip to compress the data better than the standard zlib library would. It
requires that the 7z
command-line program be installed and in PATH
.
swflzmacompress
compresses SWF files using the LZMA algorithm, support
for which was introduced in Flash 11. It will only work with SWF files with
version 13 or higher.
swfbinexport
and swfbinreplace
aid in the manipulation of
DefineBinaryData
tags in SWF files (some files may contain nested SWF files
stored in these tags).
This package was created due to lack of similar software out there. Particularly, I needed an utility which would allow me to edit ActionScript 3 bytecode with the following properties:
- Speed. Less waiting means more productivity.
rabcasm
can assemble large projects (>200000 LOC) in under a second on modern machines. - Comfortably-editable output. Each class is decompiled to its own file,
with files arranged in subdirectories representing the package hierarchy.
Class files are
#include
d from the main file. - Most importantly - robustness! If the Adobe AVM can load and run the file, then it must be editable - no matter if the file is obfuscated or otherwise mutilated to prevent reverse-engineering. RABCDAsm achieves this by using a textual representation closer to the ABC file format, rather than to what an ActionScript compiler would generate.
RABCDAsm is written in the D programming language, version 2.
Assuming you have git and a D2 compiler, such as dmd or gdc installed, compiling should be as straight-forward as:
git clone git://github.com/CyberShadow/RABCDAsm.git
cd RABCDAsm
dmd -run build_rabcdasm.d
Substitute dmd
with gdmd
if you're using gdc. You can use the DC
and
DCFLAGS
environment variables to override the detected compiler and default
compilation flags (-O -inline
).
To be able to manipulate SWF files packed with LZMA compression, you'll need to have the liblzma library and development files installed on your system.
You can find pre-compiled Windows binaries on my website. However, please don't expect them to be up-to-date with the latest source versions.
To begin hacking on a SWF file:
abcexport file.swf
This will create file-0.abc
... file-N.abc
(often just file-0.abc
). Each
file corresponds to an ABC block inside the SWF file.
To disassemble one of the .abc
files:
rabcdasm file-0.abc
This will create a file-0
directory, which will contain file-0.main.asasm
(the main program file) and files for ActionScript scripts, classes, and
orphan and script-level methods.
To assemble the .asasm
files back, and update the SWF file:
rabcasm file-0/file-0.main.asasm
abcreplace file.swf 0 file-0/file-0.main.abc
The second abcreplace
argument represents the index of the ABC block in the
SWF file, and corresponds to the number in the filename created by abcexport
.
swfbinexport
and swfbinreplace
are used in the same manner as abcexport
and abcreplace
.
The syntax of the disassembly was designed to be very simple and allow fast
and easy parsing. It is a close representation of the .abc
file format, and
thus it is somewhat verbose. All constant pool elements (signed/unsigned
integers, doubles, strings, namespaces, namespace sets, multinames) are always
expanded inline, for ease of editing. Similarly, classes, instances, methods
and method bodies are also defined inline, in the context of their "parent"
object. By-index references of classes and methods (used in the newclass
,
newfunction
and callstatic
instructions) are represented via
automatically-generated unique "reference strings", declared as refid
fields.
If you haven't yet, I strongly recommend that you look through Adobe's ActionScript Virtual Machine 2 (AVM2) Overview. You will most likely need to consult it for the instruction reference anyway (although you can also use this handy list as well). You will find it difficult to understand the disassembly without good understanding of concepts such as namespaces and multinames.
In order to guarantee unambiguity and data preservation, all strings read from the input file - including identifiers (variable/function/class names) - are represented as string literals. Thus, the syntax does not have any "reserved words" or such - an unrecognized word is treated as an error, not as an identifier.
Whitespace (outside string literals, of course) is completely ignored, except
where required to separate words. Comments are Intel-assembler-style: a single
;
demarks a comment until the next end-of-line. Control directives (such as
#include
) are allowed anywhere where whitespace is allowed.
The syntax is comprised of hierarchical blocks. Each block contains a number
of fields - starting with a keyword specifying the field type. A block is
terminated with the end
keyword. Some fields contain a limited number of
parameters, and others are, or contain blocks.
The topmost block in the hierarchy is the program
block. This must be the
first block in the file (thus, program
must be the first word in the file as
well). The program
block contains script
fields, and class
/ method
fields for "orphan" classes and methods (not owned by other objects in the
hierarchy). Orphan methods are usually anonymous functions. The file version
is also specified in the program
block, using the minorversion
and
majorversion
fields (both unsigned integers).
script
blocks have one mandatory sinit
field (the script initialization
method) and trait
fields.
A "trait" can be one of several kinds. The kind is specified right after the
trait
keyword, followed by the trait name (a multiname). Following the name
are the trait fields, varying by trait kind:
slot
/const
:slotid
(unsigned integer),type
(multiname),value
class
:slotid
,class
(the actual class block)function
:slotid
,method
(the actual method block)method
/getter
/setter
:dispid
(unsigned integer),method
Additionally, all traits may have flag
fields, describing the trait's
attributes (FINAL
/ OVERRIDE
/ METADATA
), and metadata
blocks.
metadata
blocks (which are ignored by the AVM) consist of a name string, and
a series of item
fields - each item having a key and value string.
class
blocks have mandatory instance
and cinit
fields, defining the
class instance and the class initializer method respectively. They may also
have trait
fields and a refid
field (the refid
field is not part of the
file format - it's an unique string to allow referencing the class, see above).
instance
blocks - always declared inline of their class
block - must
contain one iinit
field (the instance initializer method), and may contain
one extends
field (multiname), implements
fields (multinames), flag
fields (SEALED
/ FINAL
/ INTERFACE
/ PROTECTEDNS
), one protectedns
field (namespace), and trait
fields.
method
blocks may contain one name
field (multiname), a refid
field,
param
fields (multinames - this represents the parameter types), one
returns
field (multiname), flag
fields (NEED_ARGUMENTS
/
NEED_ACTIVATION
/ NEED_REST
/ HAS_OPTIONAL
/ SET_DXNS
/
HAS_PARAM_NAMES
), optional
fields (values), paramname
fields (strings),
and a body
field (method body).
body
blocks - always declared inline of their method
block - must contain
the maxstack
, localcount
, initscopedepth
and maxscopedepth
fields
(unsigned integers), and a code
field. It may also contain try
and trait
fields.
code
blocks - always declared inline of their body
block - are somewhat
different in syntax from other blocks - mostly in that they may contain
labels. Labels follow the most common syntax - a word followed by a :
character, optionally followed by a relative byte offset (in case of pointers
inside instructions). Multiple instruction arguments are comma-separated.
Instruction arguments' types depend on the instruction - see the OpcodeInfo
array in abcfile.d
for a reference.
try
blocks - always declared inline of their body
block - represent an
"exception" (try/catch) block. They contain five mandatory fields: from
,
to
and target
(names of labels representing start and end of the "try"
block, and start of the "catch" block respectively), and type
and name
(multinames), representing the type and name of the exception variable.
Values have the syntax type (
value )
. type can be one of
Integer
, UInteger
, Double
, Utf8
, Namespace
, PackageNamespace
,
PackageInternalNs
, ProtectedNamespace
, ExplicitNamespace
,
StaticProtectedNs
, PrivateNamespace
, True
, False
, Null
or
Undefined
. The type of the value depends on type. Types True
, False
,
Null
and Undefined
have no value.
Multinames have the syntax type (
parameters )
. type can be one of
QName
/ QNameA
, RTQName
/ RTQNameA
, RTQNameL
/ RTQNameLA
,
Multiname
/ MultinameA
, MultinameL
/ MultinameLA
, or TypeName
.
parameters depends on type:
QName
/QNameA
(
namespace,
string)
RTQName
/RTQNameA
(
string)
RTQNameL
/RTQNameLA
(
)
Multiname
/MultinameA
(
string,
namespace-set)
MultinameL
/MultinameLA
(
namespace-set)
TypeName
(
multiname<
multiname [,
multiname ... ]>
)
Namespace sets have the syntax [
[ namespace [ ,
namespace ... ] ] ]
(that is, a comma-separated list of namespaces in square brackets). Empty
namespace sets can be specified using []
.
Namespaces have the syntax type (
string [ ,
string ] )
. The
first string indicates the namespace name. In the case that there are multiple
distinct namespaces with the same type and name (as PrivateNamespace
namespaces usually are), a second parameter may be present to uniquely
distinguish them. Internally (the ABC file format), namespaces are
distinguished by their numerical index. When disassembling, rabcdasm
will
attempt to assign descriptive labels to homonym namespaces based on their
context.
Strings have a syntax similar to C string literals. Strings start and end with
a "
. Supported escape sequences (a backslash followed by a letter) are \n
(generates ASCII 0x0A), \r
(ASCII 0x0D), and \x
followed by two
hexadecimal digits, which inserts the ASCII character with that code. Any
other characters following a backslash generate that character - thus, you can
escape backslashes using \\
and double quotes using \"
. When decompiling,
high-ASCII characters (usually UTF-8) are not escaped - if you see gibberish
instead of international text, configure your editor to open the files in
UTF-8 encoding.
Additionally, constant pool types (signed/unsigned integers, doubles, strings,
namespaces, namespace sets and multinames) may also have the value null
(which represents the index 0 in the ABC file). Note that null
is
conceptually different from zero, an empty string or empty namespace set.
RABCDAsm has some basic macro-like capabilities, controlled by directives and variables. These bear some similarity to the C preprocessor, however these are processed in-loop rather than as a separate pre-processing step.
Directives start with a #
, followed by a word identifying the directive:
#include
string - inserts the contents of the file by the specified filename inline. Functionally equivalent to#mixin #get
string , but faster.#mixin
string - inserts the contents of the specified string inline. Not very useful on its own.#call
string(
[ string [,
string ... ] ])
- same as#mixin
, however it additionally sets the special variables$1
,$2
etc. to the contents of the specified arguments. When the end of the inserted string is reached, the old values of$1
,$2
etc. are restored.#get
string - inserts a string containing the contents of the file by the specified filename inline. Similar to #include, but it inserts a string (surrounded by"
etc.) instead.#set
word string - assigns the contents of the string to the variable word.#unset
word - deletes the variable word.#privatens
number string - deprecated, currently ignored.#version
specifies the syntax version of the disassembly. Newer RABCDAsm versions may emit disassembly output that is not backwards-compatible, but should still understand older disassemblies. The versions are:- The first version.
- Introduced in v1.11 to work around error in ABC format specification.
- Introduced in v1.12 to support multiple non-private namespaces with the same name. This is the current version.
Variables are manipulated with the #set
and #unset
directives, and can be
instantiated in two ways:
-
$
name - this inserts the contents of the variable inline. Note that although variables are defined using a string syntax, they are not inserted as a string using this syntax. Thus, the code:#set str "Hello, world!" ... pushstring $str
will expand to
pushstring Hello, world!
, which will result in an error. To correct the problem, add escaped quotes around the variable contents (#set str "\"Hello, world!\""
), or use the second syntax: -
$"
name"
- this inserts a string containing the contents of the variable inline. This syntax also works for#call
arguments (e.g.$"1"
).
Here's an example of how to use the above features to create a macro which logs a string literal and the contents of a register:
#set log "
findpropstrict QName(PackageNamespace(\"\"), \"log\")
pushstring $\"1\"
getlocal $2
callpropvoid QName(PackageNamespace(\"\"), \"log\"), 2
"
; ...
pushbyte 2
pushbyte 2
add_i
setlocal1
#call $"log"("two plus two equals", "1")
Included with the project is the file asasm.hrc
, a simple syntax definition
for the Colorer take5 syntax highlighting library. It should be
straight-forward to adapt it to other syntax highlighting systems.
ABC is internally represented in two forms. The ABCFile
class stores the raw
data structures, as they appear in the binary file. ASProgram
uses pointers
instead of indexes, allowing easy manipulation without having to worry about
record order or constant pools. Conversion between various states is done as
follows:
file.abc
| ^
------ ABCReader | | ABCWriter ----
/ v | \
/ ABCFile \
/ | ^ \
rabcdasm---------- ABCtoAS | | AStoABC --------rabcasm
\ v | /
\ ASProgram /
\ | ^ /
--- Disassembler | | Assembler ----
v |
file.asasm
AStoABC
will rebuild the constant pools, in a manner similar to Adobe's
compilers (reverse-sorted by reference count). The exact order will almost
surely be different, however.
Should you need to write an utility to manipulate ABC, you can use the
existing code to load the file to either an ABCFile
or ASProgram
instance,
and perform the necessary manipulations using those classes.
The following tips come from the author's experience and may be useful for RABCDAsm users.
- Once you have disassembled a SWF file you intend to modify, you should immediately add the directory to a distributed source control system, such as Git or Mercurial. This will allow you to easily track and undo your changes, and easily merge your changes with new versions of SWF files.
- If you plan on making non-trivial changes to SWF files, you should install the debug Flash Player. This will allow you to see validation and run-time error messages, instead of simply getting an empty window.
-
The Fiddler Web Debugging Proxy can be very useful for analyzing websites with SWF content. The following script fragment (which is to be placed in the
OnBeforeResponse
function) will automatically save all SWF files while preserving the directory structure.if (oSession.oResponse.headers.ExistsAndContains("Content-Type", "application/x-shockwave-flash")) { // Set desired path here var path:String = "C:\\Temp\\FiddlerCapture\\" + oSession.host + oSession.PathAndQuery; if (path.Contains('?')) path = path.Substring(0, path.IndexOf('?')); var dir:String = Path.GetDirectoryName(path); if (!Directory.Exists(dir)) Directory.CreateDirectory(dir); oSession.utilDecodeResponse(); oSession.SaveResponseBody(path); }
A more robust version of the above snippet is available as a Fiddler plugin here.
Once you have edited a SWF file, you can use Fiddler's AutoResponder to replace the original file with your modified version.
- None known.
RABCDAsm is distributed under the terms of the GPL v3 or later, with the
exception of murmurhash2a.d
, zlibx.d
and LZMA components, which are in the
public domain, and asasm.hrc
, which is tri-licensed under the MPL 1.1/GPL
2.0/LGPL 2.1. The full text of the GNU General Public License can be found in
the file COPYING
.