30 Years of Decompilation and the Unsolved Structuring Problem: Part 1 (2024)

2 days ago

The article discusses the history and challenges of decompilation, focusing on control flow structuring.
Dr. Cristina Cifuentes' 1994 dissertation is credited as foundational work in decompilation.
Control flow structuring converts disassembled programs (CFGs) into high-level language structures like if-then-else and loops.
Early decompilers like dcc produced rudimentary but functional code, often overusing while loops.
Three fundamental pillars of decompilation identified: CFG recovery & lifting, variable recovery, and control flow structuring.
IDA Pro and Reko are notable decompilers that emerged post-Cifuentes, following similar structuring principles.
Academic interest in decompilation resurfaced in 2011 with papers like 'TIE' and 'Phoenix'.
Despite its importance, decompilation research has been slow, with only a few papers published in top security conferences.
Open-source decompilers like Ghidra have recently made decompilation more accessible to researchers.
The article hints at future discussions on modern control flow structuring techniques and their limitations in Part 2.

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