RESource: A framework for online matching of assembly with open source code

Abstract

Software reverse engineering is a fastidious task demanding a strong expertise in assembly coding. Various existing tools may help analyze the functionality of a binary file without executing it and an interesting step would naturally be the search for the original source files. Our tool called RESource considers the extraction of some features in the assembly code so that queries can be triggered to a source repository in a reliable way: either (1) the result is a set of references to the original project files provided they are hosted on the repository or (2) at least some functionalities of the binary file are unleashed. Such an approach is very promising given its proved performances in real assembly code applications. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.