The better strings utility for the reverse engineer.
elf-strings will programmatically read an ELF binary's string sections within a given binary. This is meant to be much like the strings UNIX utility, however is purpose built for ELF binaries.
This means that you can get suitable information about the strings within the binary, such as the section they reside in, the offset in the section, etc.. This utility also has the functionality to 'demangle' C++ symbols, iterate linked libraries and print basic information about the ELF.
This can prove extremely useful for quickly grabbing strings when analysing a binary.
git clone https://github.com/LloydLabs/elf-strings
cd elf-strings
go build
-binary string
the path to the ELF you wish to parse
-demangle
demangle C++ symbols into their original source identifiers, prettify found C++ symbols (optional)
-hex
output the strings as a hexadecimal literal (optional)
-libs
show the linked libraries in the binary (optional)
-max-count uint
the maximum amount of strings that you wish to be output (optional)
-min uint
the minimum length of the string
-no-color
disable color output in the results
-no-human
don't validate that its a human readable string, this could increase the amount of junk.
-no-info
don't show any information about the binary
-no-trim
disable triming whitespace and trailing newlines
-offset
show the offset of the string in the section (default, recommended) (default true)
-output-file string
the path of the output file that you want to output to (optional)
-output-format string
the format you want to output as (optional, plain/json/xml) (default "plain")
An example grabbing the strings from the echo utility.
./elf-strings --binary=/bin/echo --min=4 --max-count=10
[+] Size: 31 kB
[+] Arch: x86_64
[+] Entry point: 0x401800
[+] Class: ELFCLASS64
[+] Byte order: LittleEndian
[.dynstr+0x0]: libc.so.6
[.dynstr+0xa]: fflush
[.dynstr+0x11]: __printf_chk
[.dynstr+0x1e]: setlocale
[.dynstr+0x28]: mbrtowc
[.dynstr+0x30]: strncmp
[.dynstr+0x38]: strrchr
[.dynstr+0x40]: dcgettext
[.dynstr+0x4a]: error
[.dynstr+0x50]: __stack_chk_fail