How to write a Perl, Python, or Ruby program to change the memory of another process on Windows?

Question

I wonder if Perl, Python, or Ruby can be used to write a program so that it will look for 0x12345678 in the memory of another process (probably the heap, for both data and code data) and then if it is found, change it to 0x00000000? It is something similar to Cheat Engine, which can do something like that on Windows.

Answer 1

I initially thought this was not possible but after seeing Brian's comment, I searched CPAN and lo and behold, there is Win32::Process::Memory:

C:\> ppm install Win32::Process::Info
C:\> ppm install Win32::Process::Memory

The module apparently uses the ReadProcessMemory function: Here is one of my attempts:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict; use warnings;

use Win32;
use Win32::Process;
use Win32::Process::Memory;

my $process;

Win32::Process::Create(
    $process,
    'C:/opt/vim/vim72/gvim.exe',
    q{},
    0,
    NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
    q{.}
) or die ErrorReport();

my $mem = Win32::Process::Memory->new({
    pid => $process->GetProcessID(),
    access => 'read/query',
});

$mem->search_sub( 'VIM', sub {
    print $mem->hexdump($_[0], 0x20), "\n";
});

sub ErrorReport{
    Win32::FormatMessage( Win32::GetLastError() );
}

END { $process->Kill(0) if $process }

Output:

C:\Temp> proc
0052A580 : 56 49 4D 20 2D 20 56 69 20 49 4D 70 72 6F 76 65 : VIM - Vi IMprove
0052A590 : 64 20 37 2E 32 20 28 32 30 30 38 20 41 75 67 20 : d 7.2 (2008 Aug

0052A5F0 :       56 49 4D 52 55 4E 54 49 4D 45 3A 20 22 00 :   VIMRUNTIME: ".
0052A600 : 20 20 66 61 6C 6C 2D 62 61 63 6B 20 66 6F 72 20 :   fall-back for
0052A610 : 24 56                                           : $V