WinDiff is an open-source web-based tool that allows browsing and comparing symbol, type and syscall information of Microsoft Windows binaries across different versions of the operating system. The binary database is automatically updated to include information from the latest Windows updates (including Insider Preview).
It was inspired by ntdiff and made possible with the help of Winbindex.
WinDiff is made of two parts: a CLI tool written in Rust and a web frontend written in TypeScript using the Next.js framework.
The CLI tool is used to generate compressed JSON databases out of a
configuration file and relies on Winbindex to find and download the required
PEs (and PDBs). Types are reconstructed using resym. The idea behind the CLI
tool is to be able to easily update and regenerate databases as new versions of
Windows are released. The CLI tool's code is in the windiff_cli directory.
The frontend is used to visualize the data generated by the CLI tool, in a
user-friendly way. The frontend follows the same principle as ntdiff, as it
allows browsing information extracted from official Microsoft PEs and PDBs for
certain versions of Microsoft Windows and also allows comparing this information
between versions. The frontend's code is in the windiff_frontend directory.
A scheduled GitHub action fetches new updates from Winbindex every day and
updates the configuration file used to generate the live version of WinDiff.
Currently, because of (free plans) storage and compute limitations, only KB
and Insider Preview updates less than one year old are kept for the live
version. You can of course rebuild a local version of WinDiff yourself, without
those limitations if you need to. See the next section for that.
Note: Winbindex doesn't provide unique download links for 100% of the indexed
files, so it might happen that some PEs' information are unavailable in WinDiff
because of that. However, as soon as these PEs are on VirusTotal, Winbindex
will be able to provide unique download links for them and they will then be
integrated into WinDiff automatically.
- Rust 1.68 or superior
- Node.js 16.8 or superior
The full build of WinDiff is "self-documented" in ci/build_frontend.sh, which
is the build script used to build the live version of WinDiff. Here's what's inside:
# Resolve the project's root folder
PROJECT_ROOT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)
# Generate databases
cd "$PROJECT_ROOT/windiff_cli"
cargo run --release "$PROJECT_ROOT/ci/db_configuration.json" "$PROJECT_ROOT/windiff_frontend/public/"
# Build the frontend
cd "$PROJECT_ROOT/windiff_frontend"
npm ci
npm run buildThe configuration file used to generate the data for the live version of WinDiff
is located here: ci/db_configuration.json, but you can customize it or use
your own. PRs aimed at adding new binaries to track in the live configuration
are welcome.