Intel Pin for Windows seems to crash for certain applications

[PBearson]

Hi,

I am trying to use Intel Pin to perform some instrumentation on Windows binaries. I am running Intel Pin version 3.25 on Windows 11 Build 22621. One of the apps I am trying to instrument is YABE (Yet Another BACnet Explorer, a PE32 executable), which can be found here: Yet Another Bacnet Explorer - Browse Files at SourceForge.net

When the user launches YABE, it opens a GUI that looks like the following screenshot:

The problem is that when I try to instrument YABE with Pin, it crashes immediately after the user interacts with the GUI. Pin does not report any output. After the crash, when I run:

echo %ERRORLEVEL%

It returns -1. Even for minimal pintools like the one below, the crash still happens:

#include "pin.H"
#include <iostream>

int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    if (PIN_Init(argc, argv)) return -1;

    // Never returns
    PIN_StartProgram();

    return 0;
}

I don't think it's a memory or other resource issue because everything looks okay when I look at the Task Manager.

I actually haven't had this happen with other targets, so maybe the bug is with YABE. But YABE works perfectly okay when I don't instrument it. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening?

[PBearson]

I discovered that the software runs okay if I launch the Pintool like this:

pin -t <pintool> -- cmd /C yabe

The crash happened when I ran it like this:

pin -t <pintool> -- yabe

But to me, it looks like the first case will instrument cmd.exe instead of yabe.exe. Does anyone know more about this?

[SeshaP_Intel]

Hi,

Could you please provide the following details to investigate the issue more from our end?

1. Compiler version you are using.

2. Processor you are working on.

Thanks and Regards,

Pendyala Sesha Srinivas

[PBearson]

Sure thing.

1. Compiler: Microsoft (R) C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 19.33.31630 for x86 (cl.exe provided by Visual Studio 2022)
2. Processor: Intel Core i7-8700K

(I have tried this on both my work computer and my laptop. The above specs are for my work computer. I will update this post with my laptop specs when I have access to it.)

Edit: Laptop specs are below:

1. Compiler: Identical to above
2. Processor: Intel Core i9-11900H

By the way, I also found the following command causes an eventual crash with YABE:

pin -follow_execv -t obj-ia32\icount.dll -- cmd /C Yabe                                                                                                                                                     

This is the same icount as the one provided in the SimpleExamples directory. All I've done here is added the "-follow_execv" flag.

[SeshaP_Intel · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Thanks for your response. But we suggest you raise this issue in Pinheads Newsgroup for better assistance. Please refer to the below link to raise the issue.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/tool/pin-a-dynamic-binary-instrumentation-tool.html

Thanks and Regards,

Pendyala Sesha Srinivas

[SeshaP_Intel]

Hi,

Hope the above information helped. I would go ahead and close this thread.

Thanks and Regards,

Pendyala Sesha Srinivas

[PBearson]

Thanks. I was able to solve the issue once I raised the issue in Pinheads. Unfortunately, I don't know how to close this thread.

[SeshaP_Intel]

Hi,

Thanks for the confirmation. This thread will no longer be monitored by Intel.

Thanks and Regards,

Pendyala Sesha Srinivas