English

Call graph discovery in binary programs from unknown instruction set architectures

Cryptography and Security 2024-01-17 v1 Software Engineering

Abstract

This study addresses the challenge of reverse engineering binaries from unknown instruction set architectures, a complex task with potential implications for software maintenance and cyber-security. We focus on the tasks of detecting candidate call and return opcodes for automatic extraction of call graphs in order to simplify the reverse engineering process. Empirical testing on a small dataset of binary files from different architectures demonstrates that the approach can accurately detect specific opcodes under conditions of noisy data. The method lays the groundwork for a valuable tool for reverse engineering where the reverse engineer has minimal a priori knowledge of the underlying instruction set architecture.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2401.07565,
  title  = {Call graph discovery in binary programs from unknown instruction set architectures},
  author = {Håvard Pettersen and Donn Morrison},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.07565},
  year   = {2024}
}