Reading ELF String Table on Linux from C

Question

I want to write a program which reads the string table of a binary. Binary is in ELF running on REDHAT linux 32. I did the following -

1. Read the Elf Header
2. Read all the sections

Below is the output of my progam.

Entry Address of Binary - 0x8048340
Start of Program Header - 52
Start of section header - 3272
Size of header - 52
Number of section headers - 36
Size of each section headers - 40
Number of section headers - 36
Section header Offset - 3272
string tbl index for section[0] is 0
string tbl index for section[1] is 27
string tbl index for section[7] is 35
string tbl index for section[1879048182] is 49
string tbl index for section[11] is 59
string tbl index for section[3] is 67
string tbl index for section[1879048191] is 75
string tbl index for section[1879048190] is 88
string tbl index for section[9] is 103
string tbl index for section[9] is 112
string tbl index for section[1] is 121
string tbl index for section[1] is 116
string tbl index for section[1] is 127
string tbl index for section[1] is 133
string tbl index for section[1] is 139
string tbl index for section[1] is 147
string tbl index for section[1] is 157
string tbl index for section[1] is 164
string tbl index for section[1] is 171
string tbl index for section[6] is 176
string tbl index for section[1] is 185
string tbl index for section[1] is 190
string tbl index for section[1] is 199
string tbl index for section[8] is 205
string tbl index for section[1] is 210
string tbl index for section[1] is 219
string tbl index for section[1] is 234
string tbl index for section[1] is 250
string tbl index for section[1] is 262
string tbl index for section[1] is 276
string tbl index for section[1] is 288
string tbl index for section[1] is 301
string tbl index for section[1] is 312
string tbl index for section[3] is 17
string tbl index for section[2] is 1
string tbl index for section[3] is 9

I understand that sh_name in Elf32_Shdr is basically an index to String table which actually contains a NULL terminated String. I want to display this null terminated String. I have a question here -

1. In the above output, we can see that there are multiple entries for Section Headers which have sh_type = 3 (SHT_STRTAB). So i do not understand how do i map the index(sh_name in Elf32_Shdr) to which section?

Upon printing the Elf32_Shdr for sections having sh_type = 3 i get the following output -

Section header Offset - 3272
sh_name - 67
sh_type - 3
sh_flags - 2
sh_addr - 80481e8
sh_offset - 488
sh_size - 94
sh_link - 0
sh_info - 0
sh_addralign - 1
sh_entsize - 0
--------------------------------------------------------------
sh_name - 17
sh_type - 3
sh_flags - 0
sh_addr - 0
sh_offset - 2948
sh_size - 323
sh_link - 0
sh_info - 0
sh_addralign - 1
sh_entsize - 0
--------------------------------------------------------------
sh_name - 9
sh_type - 3
sh_flags - 0
sh_addr - 0
sh_offset - 6008
sh_size - 664
sh_link - 0
sh_info - 0
sh_addralign - 1
sh_entsize - 0
--------------------------------------------------------------

Answer 1

I was able to find out the answer myself :). Although it took a lot of time to code. Here is how it is done if someone wants to refer it for future - Each Binary generally contains three String tables -

1. .dynstr
2. .shstrtab
3. .strtab

IN the above question we are concerned with .shstrtab which when expanded stands for - Section Header STRing TABle. Upon reading the ELF header we find the following field in ELF header - e_shstrndx. This is the index where we can find .shstrtab. Following formula can be used to calculate how it will be done -

offset = ((elfHdr.e_shstrndx)*elfHdr.e_shentsize)+elfHdr.e_shoff

Meaning of each parameter -

elfHdr.e_shstrndx = index where we can find .shstrtab
elfHdr.e_shentsize = Size of each Section Header
elfHdr.e_shoff = Offset at which section header starts.

Answer 2

In brief, the e_shstrndx field of ELF Executable Header contains the index of the ELF string table holding section names.

The "libelf by Example" tutorial has a lengthier explanation, along with example code showing how to retrieve section names using the functions in the ELF(3) API.