_ XenoScan _ is a memory scanner which can be used to scan the memory of processes to locate the specific locations of important values. These types of tools are typically used when hacking video games, as they allow one to locate the values representing the game’s state in memory.
_ XenoScan _ is written in C++ with a Lua frontend, and I’ve been working on advanced functionality that goes beyond anything that has been in any other memory scanners I’ve seen. Notably, it has a way to enumerate and return all complex data structures (such as std::list and std::map) in the target’s memory space, and it can even scan for any class instances and group the discovered instances by their underlying types.
_ XenoLua _ is a wrapper around Lua that provides a ton of functionality. Most notably, it provides a LuaVariant
class which wraps the functionality of converting between C
/ C++
and Lua
types. Additionally, it has helper functions for working with Lua in the LuaPrimitive
class.
_ XenoScanEngine _ is the meat of the project. It contains the code for the scanning, data structure detection, and everything else.
_ XenoScanLua _ ties _ XenoScanEngine _ to _ XenoLua _ to provide a Lua-scriptable frontend for the scanner. Currently, this is the only entry-point to the scanner.
Additionally, this project contains some test code that ensures everything is working properly. A test is a combination of a .cpp
, a .h
, and a .lua
file. For examples on how to use the scanner, you can check out the .lua
test files.
_ XenoScan _ uses _ CMake _ , and has been tested with Visual Studio 2017. In theory, you should be able to build the code with any modernish compiler, as long as you use CMake to generate the project files. Before you can compile, you will need to make sure you’ve checked out the submodules. Once that’s done, you’ll also have to build the _ luajit _ submodule so _ XenoScan _ can link against the libraries.
If you’re using Visual Studio, this should be easy. Simply run buildmsvc2017.bat
from a _ Developer Command Prompt for VS _ . As an example, to build a project for _ Visual Studio 2017 _ , I run
cd C:\path\to\XenoScan
buildmsvc2017.bat
Which would make a file named XenoScan.sln
appear in my build
directory (e.g. C:\path\to\XenoScan\build
).
The main development of XenoScan is done on this version of Visual Studio.
If you’re on another system or using another compiler or IDE, you’ll have to build _ luajit _ on your own and run _ CMake _ manually.
The code is designed to be platform-agnostic. Theoretically, to compile on any other platform, you would need to
ScannerTargetWindows.cpp
and ScannerTargetWindows.h
files from the project. ScannerTarget
interface for your platform. Basic scanning functionality supports the following types:
int8_t
uint8_t
int16_t
uint16_t
int32_t
uint32_t
int64_t
uint64_t
float
double
Custom data structures (think C++
struct
)
_ Lua frontend may choke on 64-bit integers, but the scanner library supports them. _
Scanning supports the following types of matching:
min <= check <= max
) Additionally, there is functionality to detect all instances of the following types:
std::map
std::list