SEA: Analyzing Memory Access of Executables

Abstract

In modern computer architecture, memory is an indispensable medium that software and systems relies upon when running on the computer. Messages about memory access could reflect attributes of programs, which should be invaluable with decompilation and security-related fields. This paper presents a novel memory access algorithm-SEA (Static Execution Analysis) for analyzing stripped executables. In order to support multi-source architectures, analysis is performed on a uniform intermediate representation, messages about memory access and register usage are recorded on an abstract memory model for further analysis. A tool integrating existing achievements is presented to show the usefulness of SEA. Experimental result has shown that SEA is of great help to solve some critical problems of decompilation and security.