Is there anything comparable to softICE for modern x64 systems?

bri3d · on Feb 2, 2024

https://hyperdbg.org and m1n1 (Apple Silicon) spring to mind as modern supervisor/hypervisor debuggers.

There's nothing modern I'm aware of that lets you press a key combination to get into a hypervisor debug UI like softICE was known for, though. It's all shifted to host-and-target debugging. You'd use a "normal" debugger on one machine (lldb/gdb, WinDbg, IDA, etc.) and either supervised host-to-target connection (network-to-kernel/hypervisor on x86, OCD like JTAG/SWD/CoreSight on embedded) or emulation (for pretty much everything but device driver development).

Dwedit · on Feb 2, 2024

There are modern debuggers around, it depends on what you're trying to do.

For example, x64dbg is a Windows program that can debug x86 and x64 Windows programs without any source code or debug symbols.

WinDbg lets you debug the Windows kernel even on a remote machine. If you use an emulator like VirtualBox, the remote machine can even be on the same physical computer. Useful if you're developing drivers.