Extracting Protocol Format as State Machine via Controlled Static Loop Analysis

arXiv:2305.13483v4 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: Reverse engineering of protocol message formats is critical for many security applications. Mainstream techniques use dynamic analysis and inherit its low-coverage problem -- the inferred message formats only reflect the features of their inputs. To achieve high coverage, we choose to use static analysis to infer message formats from the implementation of protocol parsers. In this work, we focus on a class of extremely challenging protocols whose formats are described via constraint-enhanced regular …

analysis applications arxiv critical cs.cr cs.pl cs.se dynamic dynamic analysis engineering features high inputs loop low machine mainstream message problem protocol reverse reverse engineering security state state machine static static analysis techniques