Introduction

We have been fortunate enough to have the Winternals team release the source code of many of their tools. We have also been lucky enough to have the permission to freely use the source code for noncommercial, personal purposes. In this chapter, we will discuss the available source code, and you will learn how to compile it. We will also attempt to create a simple keylogger based off the source code for Ctrl2cap.

Overview of the Source

From the Sysinternals Web site you can get to the source code of many of the utilities that are available for download in binary form, as well as code snippets that demonstrate concepts that the makers of these tools would like to teach us. Sometimes the article accompanying the code is more valuable and provides more insight than the code itself. Other times the code is required in order to understand some of the more difficult ideas.

In general, all pages/articles that contain source code downloads give an overview of how things work, why the author chose to code in the way he did, and how the operating system reacts. Occasionally, an undocumented function may be used, but the fact that such a function is used is well documented, with all the relevant caveats. Finally, the code includes a clear statement regarding which Windows platforms it supports, along with links to older versions, such as those targeting Windows 95 and Windows 98 systems.