Publication detail

Advanced Preprocessing of Binary Executable Files and its Usage in Retargetable Decompilation

KŘOUSTEK, J. MATULA, P. KOLÁŘ, D. ZAVORAL, M.

Original Title

Advanced Preprocessing of Binary Executable Files and its Usage in Retargetable Decompilation

Type

journal article - other

Language

English

Original Abstract

Retargetable machine-code decompilation is used for a platform-independent transformation of executable files into a high level language (HLL) representation (e.g., C language). It is a complex task that must deal with a lot of different platform-specific features and missing information. Accurate preprocessing of input executable files is one of the necessary prerequisites in order to achieve the best results. Furthermore, we can use gathered information to achieve higher quality of decompilation. This paper presents an extended version of our previous system for an accurate code preprocessing. It is implemented as a generic preprocessing system that consists of a precise compiler and packer detector, plugin-based unpacker, converter into an internal platform-independent file format, and debugging information gathering library. We also describe an utilization of the collected information in a problem of automatic data-type reconstruction. This system has been adopted and tested in an existing retargetable decompiler. According to our experimental results, the proposed retargetable solution is fully competitive with existing platform-dependent tools.

Keywords

reverse engineering, decompilation, packer detection, unpacking, executable file, Lissom

Authors

KŘOUSTEK, J.; MATULA, P.; KOLÁŘ, D.; ZAVORAL, M.

RIV year

2014

Released

30. 6. 2014

ISBN

1942-2628

Periodical

International Journal on Advances in Software

Year of study

7

Number

1

State

United States of America

Pages from

112

Pages to

122

Pages count

11

URL

http://www.iariajournals.org/software/tocv7n12.html

BibTex

@article{BUT111534,
  author="Jakub {Křoustek} and Peter {Matula} and Dušan {Kolář} and Milan {Zavoral}",
  title="Advanced Preprocessing of Binary Executable Files and its Usage in Retargetable Decompilation",
  journal="International Journal on Advances in Software",
  year="2014",
  volume="7",
  number="1",
  pages="112--122",
  issn="1942-2628",
  url="http://www.iariajournals.org/software/tocv7n12.html"
}