Towards Optimal Use of Exception Handling Information for Function Detection

Abstract

Function entry detection is critical for security of binary code. Conventional methods heavily rely on patterns, inevitably missing true functions and introducing errors. Recently, call frames have been used in exception-handling for function start detection. However, existing methods have two problems. First, they combine call frames with heuristic-based approaches, which often brings error and uncertain benefits. Second, they trust the fidelity of call frames, without handling the errors that are introduced by call frames. In this paper, we first study the coverage and accuracy of existing approaches in detecting function starts using call frames. We found that although recursive disassembly with call frames can maximize coverage, using extra heuristic-based approaches does not improve coverage and actually hurts accuracy. Second, we unveil call-frame errors and develop the first approach to fix them, making their use more reliable.