Troubleshooting

Anchor cannot find WSL / empty GUID

Symptoms

• Logs show something like:
  [!] No WSL instance found. Make sure Kali is running.

Possible causes

• The WSL2 instance is not started.
• hcsdiag list does not return lines with WSL, or the output format changed.

Actions

• Manually start your WSL2 distro and run Anchor.exe again.
• Run hcsdiag list in an elevated console and confirm the WSL instance and GUID are present.
• If the output format changed, you may need to adjust the regex in getWslGuid.

Error creating the registry service

Symptoms

• Message [!] ERROR: Administrator privileges required.
• Failure inside setupRegistry.

Possible causes

• Anchor is being run without administrator rights.
• Security policies block changes under HKLM\...\GuestCommunicationServices.

Actions

• Run Anchor.exe from an “Run as administrator” console.
• Verify that your user has permissions on that registry branch.

Connection failures from Leymano

Symptoms

• Message [!] Error connecting. Is Receiver running as Admin?

Possible causes

• Anchor is not running or failed during startup.
• Port / ServiceId do not match between sender and receiver.
• Configuration issues in Hyper-V / AF_VSOCK.

Actions

• Ensure Anchor.exe is running without errors before launching Leymano.
• Confirm that TARGET_PORT in Leymano matches the port used to build the ServiceGUID in Anchor.
• Review WSL2 and Hyper-V configuration and check that AF_VSOCK is supported in your environment.

Payload appears not to execute

Symptoms

• Logs show that the payload is received and decrypted, but you do not see the expected effect.

Possible causes

• Shellcode is not PIC or depends on unavailable context.
• XOR key used for encryption/decryption does not match due to code changes.
• The callback fails silently and control never returns to the parent process.

Actions

• Validate the payload with a simpler test loader before using Traveler.
• Start with very basic shellcode (for example, MessageBox) to confirm the chain.
• Enable more verbose logging or instrumentation in a lab environment to inspect memory and control flow.

See also

• Setup
• Usage