Gdbypass -

While these methods provide partial coverage, none offers a that simultaneously tackles process, syscall, and hardware‑based ADB checks. 2.3 Gap Analysis | Gap | Why it matters | |-----|----------------| | Cross‑Architecture Support | Modern malware targets ARM64 devices (IoT, smartphones). | | Low Performance Overhead | High‑overhead DBI defeats real‑time debugging scenarios. | | Stealth against Hybrid Checks | Timing‑based heuristics can detect DBI or kernel hooks. | | Ease of Deployment | Analysts often lack root privileges; requiring LKM is impractical. |

Title GDBypass: A Novel Technique for Transparent Debugger Evasion in Native Executables gdbypass

# Run a target with bypass LD_PRELOAD=$(pwd)/src/gdbypass.so gdb -q ./protected_binary The repository (https://github.com/yourorg/gdbypass) contains Dockerfiles for reproducible builds on both x86_64 and ARM64. 6.1 Test Bed | Platform | Kernel | CPU | GCC | Glibc | |----------|--------|-----|-----|-------| | Ubuntu 22.04 (x86_64) | 5.15.0‑76‑generic | Intel i7‑10700K (8 C/16 T) | 12.2 | 2.35 | | Ubuntu 22.04 (ARM64) | 5.15.0‑76‑generic | Cortex‑A76 (2 C) | 12.2 | 2.35 | While these methods provide partial coverage, none offers

# Build shared library make -C src gdbypass.so | | Stealth against Hybrid Checks | Timing‑based

# Install privileged helper (set‑uid root) sudo cp src/gdbypass-ctl /usr/local/sbin/ sudo chmod u+s /usr/local/sbin/gdbypass-ctl

Key surveys: Kern & Lee 2019 , Almeida et al. 2021 , Zhou & Liu 2022 . | Approach | Strengths | Limitations | |----------|-----------|--------------| | Patch‑based Bypass (e.g., gdb-patch , peda ) | Simple binary patching of known ADB checks | Requires source‑level knowledge; fragile to code changes | | Dynamic Binary Instrumentation (DBI) (e.g., DynamoRIO, PIN) | Transparent instrumentation, can rewrite ADB checks at runtime | High overhead; often detectable via DBI‑specific side‑effects | | Kernel‑Level Interposition (e.g., kdump , LKM hooks) | Can hide ptrace and procfs entries globally | Requires root privileges; kernel signatures can be detected | | Hardware Break‑point Cloaking (e.g., HyperDbg ) | Hides hardware debug registers from the target | Limited number of breakpoints; platform‑specific | | Virtual Machine Introspection (e.g., VMware , QEMU debug APIs) | Complete isolation from target OS | Detectable via hypervisor artifacts; heavy resource usage |

| Category | Representative Techniques | |----------|----------------------------| | | ptrace checks, prctl(PR_SET_DUMPABLE) , /proc inspection | | System‑Call Based | syscall return‑value tampering, seccomp filters, ptrace ‑based syscall interposition | | Hardware‑Based | Manipulation of debug registers (DR0‑DR7), MSR checks ( IA32_DEBUGCTL ), CPU performance counters | | Hybrid / Timing | rdtsc / clock_gettime comparisons before/after suspicious calls, instruction‑level timing differences |