DnStrings

DnStrings is a tool similar to the common strings/strings.exe tool which lists strings in a file. DnStrings is similar, but specializes in .NET binaries.

It currently supports the following methods:

• UserStringsHeap: Read all strings from the #US heap, which contains user-defined strings (eg. for Console.WriteLine("Hello world") it would contain Hello World). This is the default.
• StringsHeap: Read all strings from the #Strings heap, which contains symbol names and such.

Keep in mind that DnStrings is a command-line tool and is intended to work together with other command-line tools (such as grep, sort, uniq). It will not implement features that can be trivially accomplished using an existing tool.

Usage

Given the following program:

Console.Write("Enter the secret password: ");

var enteredPassword = Console.ReadLine();

if (enteredPassword == "SuperSecret!")
    Console.WriteLine("Success!");
else
    Console.WriteLine("Incorrect password.");

$ dnstrings bin/Release/net9.0/HelloWorld.dll
Enter the secret password: 
SuperSecret!
Success!
Incorrect password.

$ dnstrings -m StringsHeap bin/Release/net9.0/HelloWorld.dll
<Main>$
<Module>
HelloWorld
System.Console
System.Runtime
WriteLine
CompilerGeneratedAttribute
DebuggableAttribute
AssemblyTitleAttribute
TargetFrameworkAttribute
AssemblyFileVersionAttribute
AssemblyInformationalVersionAttribute
AssemblyConfigurationAttribute
RefSafetyRulesAttribute
CompilationRelaxationsAttribute
AssemblyProductAttribute
AssemblyCompanyAttribute
RuntimeCompatibilityAttribute
System.Runtime.Versioning
HelloWorld.dll
Program
System
System.Reflection
.ctor
System.Diagnostics
System.Runtime.CompilerServices
DebuggingModes
args
Object

Flake

If you are using the nix package manager and have flakes enabled, you can run DnStrings with nix run github:holly-hacker/dnstrings -- <file.dll>