[LLVMdev] Using LLVM for decompiling.

[Gordon Keiser]

> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of James Courtier-Dutton
> To: John Criswell
> 
> On 7 May 2012 16:31, John Criswell <criswell at illinois.edu> wrote:
> > On 5/7/12 5:47 AM, James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I am writing a decompiler. I was wondering if some of LLVM could be
> >> used for a decompiler.
> >> There are several stages in the decompiler process.
> >> 1) Take binary and create a higher level representation of it. Like RTL.
> >> 2) The output is then broken into blocks or nodes, each block ends in
> >> a CALL, JMP, RET, or 2-way or multiway conditional JMP.
> >
> >
> > I'm not sure that there's anything that will help you with this step
> > for LLVM.  The closest I can think of is Qemu, and I think that uses
> > dynamic binary translation (i.e., you have to run the binary program).
> >
> No problem. I have already coded (1) and (2)
> https://github.com/jcdutton/libbeauty
> It uses a tiny VM to help it do 1 and 2, so will eventually be able to also handle
> self modifying code.
> It is similar to qemu in that respect, except that it is not so concerned with real
> time execution of the code that qemu provides.
> >
> >> 3) The blocks or nodes are then analyzed for structure in order to
> >> extract loop information and if...then...else information.
> >
> >
> > Given that you've completed steps one and two (i.e., you've converted
> > the binary instructions to LLVM IR and then discovered basic blocks),
> > then yes, LLVM's current analysis passes should help you with this
> > third step.  LLVM has passes that normalize loops, identify loops in
> > local control-flow graphs, identify dominators/post-dominators, etc.
> Great, which bit of the LLVM source code does this bit (3)?
> 
> >
> >
> >> 4) Once structure is obtained, data types can be analyzed.
> >
> >
> > The only thing for LLVM which could help here is a
> > type-inference/points-to analysis called DSA.  However, since you're
> > reversing everything from binary code, I doubt DSA's type-inference
> > will work well, so I don't think it will find many (if any) high-level types like
> structs or arrays of structs.
> >
> > You might be able to build a more sophisticated analysis yourself, but
> > you'll pretty much be on your own.
> I agree, my need to discover data types is not a function that a compiler needs
> to do.
> The Source code has already told the compiler about the data types.
> I will work on this on my own, once I have (3) done.
> 
> >
> >
> >> 5) Lastly, source code is output in C or C++ or whatever is needed.
> >
> >
> > LLVM might have facilities for converting LLVM IR to C or C++ code
> > (the C backend was recently removed; there might be a C++ backend, but
> > I'm not sure).  However, they are primarily designed for systems for
> > which LLVM does not provide a native code generator, so the C/C++ code
> > they output isn't very readable.
> Is the reason that the C/C++ code is not very readable, because there is not
> high enough metadata in the LLVM IR to do it?
> I.e. Lack of structure.
> Or was it because it was only designed to be input to another compiler, so
> pretty structure like for loops etc, was not necessary?
> Why was the C backend removed?
> 
> James
> 


Maybe OT, but you might take a look at the emscripten project ( https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki )  , which is a Javascript backend for LLVM.   It's actively maintained and might give you some better ideas of how to do something like this once you can get back to bitcode level from assembly.  

Also take a look at  Disarm ( http://code.google.com/p/disarm/  ) which is an ARM machine code to LLVM-IR disassembler.   There may be quite a bit of relevant work done there. 

Gordon Keiser
Software Development Engineer
Arxan Technologies
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