Publication Details

A New Approach to Instruction-Idioms Detection in a Retargetable Decompiler

KŘOUSTEK Jakub, POKORNÝ Fridolín and KOLÁŘ Dušan. Reconstruction of Instruction Idioms in a Retargetable Decompiler: Revisited. Computer Science and Information Systems (ComSIS), vol. 11, no. 4, 2014, pp. 1337-1359. ISSN 1820-0214. Available from: http://www.comsis.org/
Czech title
Rekonstrukce instrukčních idiomů v rekonfigurovatelném zpětném překladači: Revidovaný Postup
Type
journal article
Language
english
Authors
Křoustek Jakub, Ing. (DIFS FIT BUT)
Pokorný Fridolín, Ing. (FIT BUT)
Kolář Dušan, doc. Dr. Ing. (DIFS FIT BUT)
URL
Keywords

compiler optimizations, reverse engineering, decompiler, Lissom, instruction idioms, LLVM, LLVM IR

Abstract

Retargetable executable-code decompilation is a one of the most complicated reverse-engineering tasks. Among others, it involves de-optimization of compiler-optimized code. One type of such an optimization is usage of so-called instruction idioms. These idioms are used to produce faster or even smaller executable files. On the other hand, decompilation of instruction idioms without any advanced analysis produces almost unreadable high-level language code that may confuse the user of the decompiler.

In this paper, we revisit and extend the previous approach of instruction-idioms detection used in a retargetable decompiler developed within the Lissom project. The previous approach was based on detection of instruction idioms in a very-early phase of decompilation (a front-end part) and it was inaccurate for architectures with a complex instruction set (e.g. Intel x86). The novel approach is based on delaying detection of idioms and reconstruction of code to the later phase (a middle-end part). For this purpose, we use the LLVM optimizer and we implement this analysis as a new pass in this tool. According to experimental results, this new approach significantly outperforms the previous approach as well as the other commercial solutions.

Published
2014
Pages
1337-1359
Journal
Computer Science and Information Systems (ComSIS), vol. 11, no. 4, ISSN 1820-0214
DOI
UT WoS
000345948100009
EID Scopus
BibTeX
@ARTICLE{FITPUB10477,
   author = "Jakub K\v{r}oustek and Fridol\'{i}n Pokorn\'{y} and Du\v{s}an Kol\'{a}\v{r}",
   title = "A New Approach to Instruction-Idioms Detection in a Retargetable Decompiler",
   pages = "1337--1359",
   journal = "Computer Science and Information Systems (ComSIS)",
   volume = 11,
   number = 4,
   year = 2014,
   ISSN = "1820-0214",
   doi = "10.2298/CSIS131203076K",
   language = "english",
   url = "https://www.fit.vut.cz/research/publication/10477"
}
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