A Memorization Floor for LLM Refinement of Decompiled Code

📅 2026-09-15
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🤖 AI Summary
研究通过引入记忆底线方法,区分了大型语言模型从输入和先验中恢复反编译代码的能力,发现恢复效果主要来自先验而非输入。
📝 Abstract
We introduce a memorization floor: a within-item control separating what LLM refinement of decompiler output recovers from its input from what it recovers from its prior. Refine a function, then refine it again from an input whose identifiers have been destroyed, and measure what survives. Because the comparison is within-item, corpus difficulty cannot contribute; it costs twenty API calls. Applied to functions written after our analysis plan was committed, so no released model could have memorized them, it reports two things. Recovery is real: refined output sits +0.072 to +0.137 above an arm-matched permutation null built from its own output vocabulary. But it does not depend on the input we ablate: destroying the input's dataflow changes the naming gain by +0.001 (95% CI [-0.026, +0.026]), and removing type prefixes or permuting names changes it by no more. A second refiner from another vendor, registered in advance and given byte-identical inputs, reproduces this -- twelve contrasts, two models, twelve nulls. Readability stays at ceiling throughout, so a reader is given no signal. The null is bounded, not absolute: contributions under 0.056 are invisible, and the ablation leaves operations intact, so naming from those alone remains a competing reading. No registered hypothesis was confirmed, and we report the five instrument failures behind that in full, including a reassembly harness biased against the treated arm and an equivalence checker we registered without checking it worked on our inputs.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

LLM
decompiled code
refinement
memorization floor
prior knowledge
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

memorization floor
LLM refinement
decompiled code
within-item control
prior knowledge
M
Muhammad Asjad
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad, Pakistan