Parsing .rodata (ELF)

Question

IDA pro is able to display the data contained in the read only data section of ELF files, but the section is defined as type SHT_PROGBITS.

To my knowledge, we cannot parse sections of this type to resolve information such as constant data/variable names.

So my question is how do tools such as IDA actually get the information in .rodata or other SHT_PROGBITS sections such as .PLT.

Thanks

Answer 1

According to ELF-format SHT_PROGBITS meens only that

The section holds information defined by the program, whose format and meaning are determined solely by the program.

But ELF-section's type is not the only (and not main) attribute for parsing data from file. There are also section's name and attributes.

Sections like .text and .data also have SHT_PROGBITS-type, but their names are special.

Generally (and very simply) the process of ELF-parsing is so:

1. Read File header
2. Read Section Headers table
3. Read Symbol table
4. Make Relocations

More info you can take from IDA's ELF-loader (IDA_Dir\loaders\elf.ldw (or dll)) or from a tools like readelf.