pseudo-version-dll

What's this?

This is a Visual Studio 2022 project which generates (pseudo) version.dll. Since it passes all arguments to genuine version.dll, virtually both of them have same functionality as version.dll.

Since many Windows executables load version.dll, you can use this project to add functionalities/hooks/hacks to target executable. This project also provides same functionality for lz32.dll, hid.dll and msimg32.dll.

For hooking purpose, you may also interest in API hook library minhook.

How to build

• Run build-vs2022.bat
• Artifacts will be put under artifacts/
  • If you need, you can rename version.dll to lz32.dll, hid.dll or msimg32.dll.

Test

• Check your target executable by Dependencies.
  • If your target doesn't use version.dll or supported DLLs, you can't use this project.
• Put artifacts/version.dll (or renamed one) into your tareget's directory. Executable and DLL must be put on the same directory.
  • If your target is <PATH>/<TO>/<YOUR>/<TARGET>.exe you must put version.dll in <PATH>/<TO>/<YOUR>/version.dll
• Put artifacts/plugins/example_plugin.dll to <PATH>/<TO>/<YOUR>/<TARGET>.exe.plugins/example_plugin.dll
• Open DebugView
• Run your<TARGET>.exe
  • DebugView shows CreateFileW() activities which is hooked by example_plugin.dll.

Plugin loading rules

• version.dll loads all DLLs which are placed in YOUR-TARGET.exe-PATH/YOUR-TARGET.exe.plugins/.
  • DLLs are loaded from mutiple directories recursively.
    • If directory's or file's name is started with ., they're ignored. e.g. .my-private-dir/, .my-private-file.dll, etc.
  • DLL loading order is decided by std::sort() for std::wstring paths of DLLs.
    • e.g. YOUR-PATH\01\*.dll is loaded before YOUR-PATH\99\*.dll