pseudo-version-dll

What's this?

This is a Visual Studio 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 almost all Windows executables load version.dll, you can use this project to add functionalities/hooks/hacks to target executable. For hooking purpose, you may also interest in API hook library minhook.

How to build

• Open version.sln with Visual Studio 2017
• Build x64/Debug or x64/Release
• x64/Debug/version.dll or x64/Release/version.dll will be produced.

Test

• Copy C:\Windows\notepad.exe to C:\mytest\notepad.exe
• Create directory C:\mytest\notepad.exe.plugins
• Open and release build version.sln.
  • Copy x64\Release\version.dll to C:\mytest\version.dll
• Open and release build example_plugin\example_plugin.sln.
  • Copy example_plugin\x64\Release\example_plugin.dll to C:\mytest\notepad.exe.plugins\example_plugin.dll
• Open DebugView
• Run C:\mytest\notepad.exe and open or save some text file.
  • 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