Behavior Specification-Guided Program Synthesis for Binary Deobfuscation

📅 2026-08-20
📈 Citations: 0
Influential: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
为解决二进制代码反混淆问题,提出基于行为规范指导的程序合成方法BinMirror,通过动态执行轨迹和交互快照合成高质量源码。
📝 Abstract
Deobfuscation is critical to reverse engineering and security analysis because it restores the readability and analyzability of obfuscated code. However, existing research primarily focuses on source-code deobfuscation, while binary-level deobfuscation remains largely underexplored despite its practical importance when source code is unavailable. Existing binary deobfuscation methods typically decompile binaries into pseudocode and then apply structural transformations. However, because compilation discards high-level semantics such as precise type information and source-level structures, this decompilation-based paradigm often produces low-quality code and provides limited assurance that the recovered code preserves the runtime behavior of the original program. To address these limitations, we propose a paradigm shift from structural transformation to behavior-driven synthesis. Our core insight is that although obfuscation distorts a program's internal structure, semantics-preserving transformations must retain its observable execution behavior. Based on this insight, we introduce BinMirror, an approach that reformulates binary deobfuscation as a behavior-specification-guided program synthesis task. By treating dynamic execution traces and interaction snapshots as behavioral specifications, BinMirror synthesizes high-quality source code and validates it against runtime observations collected from heavily obfuscated binaries. Extensive evaluations on 1.5 million synthetically obfuscated binaries show that BinMirror significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, achieving a unit-test Pass@1 of 74.5% under extreme obfuscation. These results demonstrate the practical utility of BinMirror in restoring semantic clarity for real-world security analysis.
Problem

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

binary deobfuscation
high-level semantics
runtime behavior
Innovation

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

behavior-specification-guided
program synthesis
binary deobfuscation
dynamic execution traces
interaction snapshots
K
Kangchen Zhu
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China
Shangwen Wang
Shangwen Wang
National University of Defense Technology
software engineering
Z
Zhiliang Tian
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China
Zhouyang Jia
Zhouyang Jia
National University of Defense Technology
Software Engineering
X
Xiaoling Li
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China
J
Jun Ma
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China
J
Jie Yu
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China
X
Xiaoguang Mao
College of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, China