Microsoft Detours

Microsoft Detours

Original author(s)	Microsoft Research
Developer(s)	Microsoft
Initial release	January 16, 2002; 22 years ago (2002-01-16)
Stable release	4.0.1 / April 16, 2018; 6 years ago (2018-04-16)
Repository	Detours on GitHub
Written in	C++
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Type	Software library
License	MIT License
Website	Official website

Microsoft Detours is an open source library for intercepting, monitoring and instrumenting binary functions on Microsoft Windows.^[1] It is developed by Microsoft and is most commonly used to intercept Win32 API calls within Windows applications. Detours makes it possible to add debugging instrumentation and to attach arbitrary DLLs to any existing Win32 binary. Detours does not require other software frameworks as a dependency and works on ARM, x86, x64, and IA-64 systems.^[2] The interception code is applied dynamically at execution time.

Detours is used by product teams at Microsoft and has also been used by ISVs.^[1][3][4]

Prior to 2016, Detours was available in a free version limited for non-commercial and 32 bit only use and a paid version for commercial use.^[5] Since 2016, the source code is licensed under MIT License and available on GitHub.^[1]

See also

• WinDbg
• Dr. Watson (debugger)
• Process Explorer
• ProcDump

References

Further reading

• Hunt, Galen; Brubacher, Doug (1997). "Detours: Binary Interception of Win32 Functions" (PDF). Third USENIX Windows NT Symposium.

External links

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Windows Programming