Printing out the names of implicitly linked dll's from .idata section in a portable executable

Question

I am trying to write a code which is supposed to print out the names of all the imported dll\'s in the exe by using the \'name\' field of the IMAGE_IMPORT_DESCRIPTOR structure i

Answer 1

The answer by mox is right on all points, however I would also like to add another solution - load the file as an image to read the data.
This is achieved very simply using LoadLibraryEx with just one line of code.

Base = LoadLibraryEx("c:\Linked List.exe", 0, DONT_RESOLVE_DLL_REFERENCES);

This load and maps your executable as an image, so no need for opening/reading/mapping or converting rva to raw offsets.

With the DONT_RESOLVE_DLL_REFERENCES flag the image is uninitialized, so all import data is untouched, and entrypoint code is not executed. The executable is just mapped into memory.

You can simply use Base + Rva to find imported dll name - or any other kind of PE information.
Free the executable image after use with FreeLibrary(Base)