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At the Bottom of Binary Analysis: Instructions

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Foundations and Practice of Security (FPS 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13291))

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Abstract

We present here a careful exploration of the set of instructions for the x86 processor architecture. This is a preliminary step towards a systematic comparison of SMT-based retro-engineering tools. The latter arose in the context of binary code retro-engineering. All these tools rely themselves on more elementary disassembly tool. In this contribution, we attack the problem at its most atomic level: the instructions. We prepare, trading off between the size of the list and the correctness of the future comparison, a good list of instructions.

G. Bonfante—Experiments have been conducted at LHS - LORIA.

A. Talon—Supported by DGA - Direction Générale de l’Armement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://hex-rays.com/IDA-pro/.

  2. 2.

    https://ghidra-sre.org.

  3. 3.

    http://www.capstone-engine.org.

  4. 4.

    https://zydis.re.

  5. 5.

    https://intelxed.github.io.

  6. 6.

    More technical details can be found in http://ref.x86asm.net/coder32.html.

References

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Acknowledgments

We thank Fabrice Sabatier who gave us some examples of “nasty” instructions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Lorraine - LORIA, Nancy, France

    Guillaume Bonfante

  2. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, G-SCOP, 38000, Grenoble, France

    Alexandre Talon

Authors
  1. Guillaume Bonfante
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  2. Alexandre Talon
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandre Talon .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Esma Aïmeur

  2. Télécom SudParis, Palaiseau, France

    Maryline Laurent

  3. IRT SystemX, Palaiseau, France

    Reda Yaich

  4. University of Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Benoît Dupont

  5. Télécom SudParis, Palaiseau, France

    Joaquin Garcia-Alfaro

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Bonfante, G., Talon, A. (2022). At the Bottom of Binary Analysis: Instructions. In: Aïmeur, E., Laurent, M., Yaich, R., Dupont, B., Garcia-Alfaro, J. (eds) Foundations and Practice of Security. FPS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13291. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08147-7_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08147-7_21

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-08146-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-08147-7

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