All of Florian Magin's Comments + Replies

The graph representation of code is very different than automated decompiling like hex-rays in my opinion.

There are many different graph representations of code, some of them are crucial for automated decompiling, others probably aren't. So I'm not sure which one you are referring to here. And in the end, the result of the decompilation process is a graph (either a tree like the AST of the C-Code, but I admit that it is kinda nitpicky to call that a "Graph representation"[0]), or more of a true graph like Binary Ninjas High Level Intermediate Language (if ... (read more)

Context: I have been working in IT Security with reverse engineering as my main interest for nearly 7 years, been interested in it for ~8.5 years, and have been working on automated reverse engineering at a research institute for 3 years. I have been vaguely interested in mechanistic interpretability for the last months and am strongly considering switching to it as a field of research, depending on how much of my RE skillset/experience transfers.

 

I think one topic that the article/viewpoint/Itay Yona are missing is how much of modern RE is only feasi... (read more)

3Itay Yona
Thanks, that's a good insight. The graph representation of code is very different than automated decompiling like hex-rays in my opinion. I agree that graph representation is probably the most critical step towards a more high-level analysis and understanding. I am not sure why you claim it required decades of tools because since the dawn of computer-science turing-machines were described with graphs.  In any case this is an interesting point as it suggest we might want to focus on finding graph-like concepts which will be useful for describing the different states of a neural network computation, and later developing IDA-like tool :) since we share similar backgrounds and aspiration feel free to reach out: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itay-yona-b40a7756/