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The article focuses on OSS, but closed-source software is at major risk too. Perhaps more. It's gotten much easier to reverse engineer binaries in general, and

The article focuses on OSS, but closed-source software is at major risk too. Perhaps more. It's gotten much easier to reverse engineer binaries in general, and security patches in particular. Basically, an LLM can turn binaries into 'readable' code, and then reason about said code.

salsakran 5mo ago
Perhaps -- but I think for most people, the vast majority of proprietary software they consume is over the network. But yeah, if you're distributing binaries publicly, then you're going to have very similar problems.
- redanddead 5mo ago
  That happens a lot though, even OpenAI is attempting to lock functionality (like computer-use, 2 weeks ago) behind a binary -- Mac only they said, no EU. I saw a guy crack it the same day, ported to Windows. There are many many things like Rive that use binaries, obfuscation and uglification has been the name of the proprietary game for a long ass time, with the only protection being an assumption that "nobody would go through that trouble", yeah an LLM would ralph loop through it all day long, and make what you paid good money for pretty much free for anyone to use whenever they feel like it, we're back to the the "you wouldn't download a car would you?" argument
- yencabulator 4mo ago
  The LLM is also good at exploring the private API your web server exposes to the web UI.
edrobap 5mo ago
I had done a fair bit of reverse-engineering-jar-files in the pre-LLM era for various reasons. The biggest problem with decompiled java files was naming. The original variable names, class names etc were not retained and the decompiler would use some alphanumeric series. That'd make reading code very hard. Curious how the current LLMs are able to address this. Maybe it's able to figure out how the class, variable etc is used and name it accordingly. (All this is assuming the original code itself was readable because there are enough bad programmers)
- roenxi 5mo ago
  I expect Java would be easy-mode for the AI, they already do quite well reconstructing C++ from ghidra output in my experience from when I wanted to know what damage formula some game was using. As a reminder; your account has been shadow-banned, it looks like you got a little unlucky in 2016.
  - edrobap 5mo ago
    > I expect Java would be easy-mode That makes sense. Java leaves metadata in compiled code to reconstruct better. > your account has been shadow-banned, it looks like you got a little unlucky in 2016 I see. I wasn't aware. Thanks. I thought the two comments per day limit is for users with low karma. Anyway, I'm using that limit to push myself in being picky about posts to comment on and to improve the quality of comments.
    - roenxi 5mo ago
      Shadowbans are actually a bit more than that - your comments are invisible unless someone with a high karma threshold puts a little effort in to mark them as reasonable. People can't actually see most of your comments. I'd recommend creating a new account. Or you could email the mods (I forget the email but it is publicly available somewhere) if the user name has sentimental value. In your case it is clear that a shadowban is inappropriate.
      - edrobap 5mo ago
        [dead]
twism 5mo ago
Does it even need to turn it into readable code?
- _alternator_ 5mo ago
  My understanding is that decompilation into more readable code is an important step in building the path to an exploit. This understanding may be incomplete or outdated (things moving very fast right now). I'd love to hear from a someone with more experience using LLMs to do binary analysis about the level of 'binary annotation' needed for LLMs relative to humans.

salsakran 5mo ago

Perhaps -- but I think for most people, the vast majority of proprietary software they consume is over the network. But yeah, if you're distributing binaries publicly, then you're going to have very similar problems.

redanddead 5mo ago
That happens a lot though, even OpenAI is attempting to lock functionality (like computer-use, 2 weeks ago) behind a binary -- Mac only they said, no EU. I saw a guy crack it the same day, ported to Windows. There are many many things like Rive that use binaries, obfuscation and uglification has been the name of the proprietary game for a long ass time, with the only protection being an assumption that "nobody would go through that trouble", yeah an LLM would ralph loop through it all day long, and make what you paid good money for pretty much free for anyone to use whenever they feel like it, we're back to the the "you wouldn't download a car would you?" argument
yencabulator 4mo ago
The LLM is also good at exploring the private API your web server exposes to the web UI.

edrobap 5mo ago

I had done a fair bit of reverse-engineering-jar-files in the pre-LLM era for various reasons. The biggest problem with decompiled java files was naming. The original variable names, class names etc were not retained and the decompiler would use some alphanumeric series. That'd make reading code very hard. Curious how the current LLMs are able to address this. Maybe it's able to figure out how the class, variable etc is used and name it accordingly. (All this is assuming the original code itself was readable because there are enough bad programmers)

roenxi 5mo ago
I expect Java would be easy-mode for the AI, they already do quite well reconstructing C++ from ghidra output in my experience from when I wanted to know what damage formula some game was using. As a reminder; your account has been shadow-banned, it looks like you got a little unlucky in 2016.
- edrobap 5mo ago
  > I expect Java would be easy-mode That makes sense. Java leaves metadata in compiled code to reconstruct better. > your account has been shadow-banned, it looks like you got a little unlucky in 2016 I see. I wasn't aware. Thanks. I thought the two comments per day limit is for users with low karma. Anyway, I'm using that limit to push myself in being picky about posts to comment on and to improve the quality of comments.
  - roenxi 5mo ago
    Shadowbans are actually a bit more than that - your comments are invisible unless someone with a high karma threshold puts a little effort in to mark them as reasonable. People can't actually see most of your comments. I'd recommend creating a new account. Or you could email the mods (I forget the email but it is publicly available somewhere) if the user name has sentimental value. In your case it is clear that a shadowban is inappropriate.
    - edrobap 5mo ago
      [dead]

twism 5mo ago

Does it even need to turn it into readable code?

_alternator_ 5mo ago
My understanding is that decompilation into more readable code is an important step in building the path to an exploit. This understanding may be incomplete or outdated (things moving very fast right now). I'd love to hear from a someone with more experience using LLMs to do binary analysis about the level of 'binary annotation' needed for LLMs relative to humans.