KernelDriverLib - C# Kernel Driver Library

Important

Due to lack of time to work on this project, as well as lack of popularity, this project has been archived as of Oct 3, 2025. It is not planned to be moved to my Codeberg account along with my other projects at the time of writing. You may find more up-to-date code in two of my main projects, YAMDCC and OpenBootCamp, which the code for this project was based on.

A C# (.NET) library for installing and accessing Windows kernel drivers.

Disclaimers

• This library can do some pretty powerful stuff (as it interfaces directly with kernel drivers). Only use if you know what you're doing!
• Linux will never be supported by this library, so don't ask.

Features

This library can:

• Install and uninstall kernel drivers (.sys files)
  • Persistent install is not well supported yet.
• Issue commands to drivers via DeviceIoControl.
  • ReadFile/WriteFile not supported yet.
• Restrict access of a driver's device (e.g. for WinRing0: \\.\WinRing0_1_2_0) to admin access only
  • Useful for reducing the attack surface of vulnerabilities in WinRing0 and other drivers

This library may be useful for interoping with WinRing0 or other similar drivers.

Usage notes

This library's Driver class is designed to be extended by adding driver-specific IOCTLs to a subclass. For example:

public class Ring0Driver : Driver
{
    public Ring0Driver(string name) : base(name) { }
    public Ring0Driver(string name, string path) : base(name, path) { }

    public bool IOControl(Ring0IOCTL ctlCode)
    {
        return IOControl((uint)ctlCode);
    }

    public bool IOControl<TIn, TOut>(Ring0IOCTL ctlCode, ref TIn inBuffer, out TOut outBuffer)
        where TIn : unmanaged
        where TOut : unmanaged
    {
        return IOControl((uint)ctlCode, ref inBuffer, out outBuffer);
    }

    // add more overrides to your driver subclass as needed
}

public enum Ring0IOCTL : uint
{
    GetDriverVersion = 40000u << 16 | 0x800 << 2,
    GetRefCount      = 40000u << 16 | 0x801 << 2,
    ReadIOPortByte   = 40000u << 16 | 0x833 << 2 | 1 << 14,
    WriteIOPortByte  = 40000u << 16 | 0x836 << 2 | 2 << 14,
    // ...
}

Struct support hasn't been well tested, but should work if the [StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential, Pack = 1)] attribute is added to structs to be passed to the driver.

Build

Using Visual Studio

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 with the .NET Desktop Development workload checked.
2. Download the code repository, or clone it with git.
3. Extract the downloaded code, if needed.
4. Open KernelDriverLib.sln in Visual Studio.
5. Click Build > Build Solution to build everything.
6. Your output, assuming default build settings, is located in KernelDriverLib\bin\Debug\net48\.
7. ???
8. Profit!

From the command line

1. Follow steps 1-3 above to install Visual Studio and download the code.
2. Open Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022 and cd to your project directory.
3. Run msbuild /t:restore to restore the solution, including NuGet packages.
4. Run msbuild KernelDriverLib.sln /p:platform="Any CPU" /p:configuration="Debug" to build the project, substituting Debug with Release (or Any CPU with x86 or x64) as
5. Your output should be located in KernelDriverLib\bin\Debug\net48\ (or similar).
6. ???
7. Profit!

Supported Windows versions

In theory, any version of Windows that can run .NET Framework 4.8 (i.e. Windows 7 SP1 and later) can run this library.

In practice, only Windows 10 64-bit has been tested. Other versions should work, but haven't been tested.

License and Copyright

Copyright © 2024 Sparronator9999.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.