The slides and video for my keynote speech, "Program Synthesis in Reverse Engineering", are now online.

Abstract

Program synthesis is an academic discipline devoted to creating computer programs automatically, given a precise specification of how the program should operate. It works on small scales and is mostly researched for programs without loops in them. We apply and adapt existing academic work in program synthesis to solve problems in reverse engineering.

Semi-automated synthesis of CPU emulators (academic inspiration here) Automated generation of deobfuscators for peephole-expansion obfuscators (academic inspiration here) Reconstruction of obfuscated, metamorphic code sequences (academic inspiration here)

Viewing Instructions

Open the video on half of your screen and the slides on the other, switching through the slides as I do so during the video. The presentation uses a lot of in-frame animations, so for best results, you will want to view the PDF in contiguous rather than contiguous mode. I.e., only one slide should be on-screen at a time (no fractions of subsequent slides visible), and that advancing the slide should bring up an entirely new slide. This is easy to accomplish with the full-page mode of standalone PDF viewers. In Chrome's PDF viewer, you can use the left and right arrow keys to advance or retreat one slide at a time. Alternatively, there is an icon bar at the bottom right of each slide. The first two buttons from the left retreat and advance by one slide, respectively. Failing all of these options, use a different PDF viewer.

Program Analysis Course

Information about the new course described at the end of the talk can be found here. At present, for logistical reasons, only private on-site offerings can be accommodated. I hope to install a web application to help track demand (availability in time and in region) to schedule public courses.