Windows User Space Emulator

A high-performance Windows process emulator that operates at syscall level, providing full control over process execution through comprehensive hooking capabilities.

Perfect for security research, malware analysis, and DRM research where fine-grained control over process execution is required.

Built in C++ and powered by the Unicorn Engine (or the icicle-emu 🆕).

Key Features

• 🔄 Syscall-Level Emulation
  • Instead of reimplementing Windows APIs, the emulator operates at the syscall level, allowing it to leverage existing system DLLs
• 📝 Advanced Memory Management
  • Supports Windows-specific memory types including reserved, committed, built on top of Unicorn's memory management
• 📦 Complete PE Loading
  • Handles executable and DLL loading with proper memory mapping, relocations, and TLS
• ⚡ Exception Handling
  • Implements Windows structured exception handling (SEH) with proper exception dispatcher and unwinding support
• 🧵 Threading Support
  • Provides a scheduled (round-robin) threading model
• 💾 State Management
  • Supports both full state serialization and fast in-memory snapshots (currently broken 😕)
• 💻 Debugging Interface
  • Implements GDB serial protocol for integration with common debugging tools (IDA Pro, GDB, LLDB, VS Code, ...)

Note

The project is still in a very early, prototypical state. The code still needs a lot of cleanup and many features and syscalls need to be implemented. However, constant progress is being made :)

Preview

YouTube Overview

Click here for the slides.

Build & Run Instructions

Instructions on how to build & run the emulator and more can be found in the Wiki!