Most C++ platform ABIs are pretty trivial to recognize. A tool like this could distinguish a C++ binary by looking at its initialization/housekeeping sections,

Most C++ platform ABIs are pretty trivial to recognize. A tool like this could distinguish a C++ binary by looking at its initialization/housekeeping sections, static constructors, __cxa_atexit, exception handling tables, linked libraries, etc. For example, the Itanium C++ ABI (http://mentorembedded.github.io/cxx-abi/ http://mentorembedded.github.io/cxx-abi/, perhaps Itanium's only real legacy) adopted by Linux/ELF and other platforms, leaves a huge amount of fingerprints on a binary. It'd take a very conscious effort, including hand-crafting linker scripts, to generate a C binary that a tool would incorrectly think was C++.