The latest articles on DEV Community by talkingtogod (@talkingtogod). https://dev.to/talkingtogod https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F3914700%2Fc3b8bd54-c471-456d-97c9-615208ff3372.jpeg https://dev.to/talkingtogod en talkingtogod Tue, 05 May 2026 20:52:19 +0000 https://dev.to/talkingtogod/zenwinhook-a-thread-safe-windows-hooking-library-in-c-1bb7 https://dev.to/talkingtogod/zenwinhook-a-thread-safe-windows-hooking-library-in-c-1bb7 <h2> I got tired of sketchy Windows hooks, so I made my own </h2> <p>Hooking on Windows is one of those things that looks easy until it randomly crashes your process.</p> <p>I kept running into the same issues: threads executing half patched code, weird instruction layouts breaking inline hooks, and edge cases most libraries just ignore.</p> <p>So I built ZenWinHook.</p> <h2> Why I made it </h2> <p>Libraries like MinHook and PolyHook 2 are great, but they don’t really try to handle everything.</p> <p>The biggest pain for me was patching safely while multiple threads are running, that’s where things usually fall apart.</p> <h2> What it does </h2> <p>ZenWinHook is a small C++ library that focuses on doing hooks properly.</p> <p>It handles thread safe patching so you don’t get torn instructions.<br><br> Inline hooks actually parse and relocate instructions instead of guessing.<br><br> There are multiple hook types, so you don’t have to mix libraries.<br><br> And everything is RAII based so cleanup just happens automatically</p> <h2> When it’s useful </h2> <p>I mainly built this for:</p> <ul> <li>debugging</li> <li>instrumentation</li> <li>reverse engineering</li> <li>anything where stability actually matters</li> </ul> <h2> That’s it </h2> <p>If you’ve ever had hooks randomly crash a process, you’ll probably get why this exists.</p> <p>Repo: <a href="https://github.com/talkingtogod/zenwinhook" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://github.com/talkingtogod/zenwinhook</a></p> cpp opensource reverseengineering