Abstract
Decompilers are fundamental tools to perform security assessments of third-party software. The quality of decompiled code can be a game changer in order to reduce the time and effort required for analysis. This paper proposes a novel approach to restructure the control flow graph recovered from binary programs in a semantics-preserving fashion. The algorithm is designed from the ground up with the goal of producing C code that is both goto-free and drastically reducing the mental load required for an analyst to understand it. As a result, the code generated with this technique is well-structured, idiomatic, readable, easy to understand and fully exploits the expressiveness of C language. The algorithm has been implemented on top of the revng static binary analysis framework. The resulting decompiler, revngc, is compared on real-world binaries with state-of-the-art commercial and open source tools. The results show that our decompilation process introduces between 40% and 50% less extra cyclomatic complexity.
Giovanni Agosta
Associate Professor
Giovanni Agosta, Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano, holds a Laurea in Computer Engineering (2000) and a PhD in Information Technology (2004). His research focuses on compiler-computer architecture interaction, emphasizing performance, energy-efficiency, and security. He has authored 100+ papers, won multiple awards, and participated in 17 EU-funded projects.