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CP-BCS: Binary Code Summarization Guided by Control Flow Graph and Pseudo Code

  • Tong Ye
  • , Lingfei Wu
  • , Tengfei Ma
  • , Xuhong Zhang
  • , Yangkai Du
  • , Peiyu Liu
  • , Shouling Ji
  • , Wenhai Wang
  • Zhejiang University
  • Anytime.AI

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

Automatically generating function summaries for binaries is an extremely valuable but challenging task, since it involves translating the execution behavior and semantics of the low-level language (assembly code) into human-readable natural language. However, most current works on understanding assembly code are oriented towards generating function names, which involve numerous abbreviations that make them still confusing. To bridge this gap, we focus on generating complete summaries for binary functions, especially for stripped binary (no symbol table and debug information in reality). To fully exploit the semantics of assembly code, we present a control flow graph and pseudo code guided binary code summarization framework called CP-BCS. CP-BCS utilizes a bidirectional instruction-level control flow graph and pseudo code that incorporates expert knowledge to learn the comprehensive binary function execution behavior and logic semantics. We evaluate CP-BCS on 3 different binary optimization levels (O1, O2, and O3) for 3 different computer architectures (X86, X64, and ARM). The evaluation results demonstrate CP-BCS is superior and significantly improves the efficiency of reverse engineering.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationEMNLP 2023 - 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Proceedings
EditorsHouda Bouamor, Juan Pino, Kalika Bali
PublisherAssociation for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Pages14740-14752
Number of pages13
ISBN (Electronic)9798891760608
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023
Event2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP 2023 - Hybrid, Singapore, Singapore
Duration: Dec 6 2023Dec 10 2023

Publication series

NameEMNLP 2023 - 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, Proceedings

Conference

Conference2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, EMNLP 2023
Country/TerritorySingapore
CityHybrid, Singapore
Period12/6/2312/10/23

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