Hieronym: Leveraging Hierarchical Multi-Source Information for Function Renaming in Stripped Binary
Xiaoling Zhang, Jian Sun, Dawei Wang, Chongyu Wang, Li Chen, Zhaoteng Yan, Peipei Liu, Lixiao Zhang, Dan Li
Abstract
Function renaming in stripped binaries can substantially assist reverse engineers by improving code readability, yet it is a challenging task. The difficulty stems from the need to accurately capture function semantics from low-level binary code across diverse instruction sets, architectures, and compiler optimizations, and to express these semantics in concise, human-readable names. Existing approaches either inadequately capture comprehensive function semantics or exhibit limited generalization to previously unseen binaries. In this paper, we present Hieronym, a generative large language model (LLM)-based framework for stripped binary function renaming. Hieronym adopts a hierarchical summarization-driven domain adaptation strategy and integrates multi-source information-including global binary context, local calling context, and intrinsic function semantics-to enhance the LLM's understanding of binary code. To enable systematic evaluation, we further propose a dual-layer evaluation framework that incorporates both token-level and whole-name-level metrics. We evaluate Hieronym on binary functions compiled with four compiler optimization levels (O0-O3) for four architectures (x64, x86, ARM, and MIPS). Experimental results demonstrate that Hieronym significantly outperforms stateof-the-art methods, achieving token-level improvements of 50.12% in precision, 41.75% in recall, and 45.10% in F1-score, as well as a 79.94% improvement in name-level accuracy, while also exhibiting
Ask about this paper
Your agent reads all of it.
Lune indexed this paper to the last equation, along with the top-tier papers that cite it. Ask a question and the answer quotes them.
Builds on27
- LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language ModelsEdward J. Hu, Yelong Shen, Phillip Wallis, Zeyuan Allen-Zhu et al.ICLR 2022 · 18,833 citations
- Self-Instruct: Aligning Language Models with Self-Generated InstructionsYizhong Wang, Yeganeh Kordi, Swaroop Mishra, Alisa Liu et al.ACL 2023 · 540 citations
- Asm2Vec: Boosting Static Representation Robustness for Binary Clone Search against Code Obfuscation and Compiler OptimizationSteven H. H. Ding, Benjamin C. M. Fung, Philippe CharlandS&P 2019 · 447 citations
- SPoT: Better Frozen Model Adaptation through Soft Prompt TransferTu Vu, Brian Lester, Noah Constant, Rami Al-Rfou' et al.ACL 2022 · 332 citations
- Debin: Predicting Debug Information in Stripped BinariesJingxuan He, Pesho Ivanov, Petar Tsankov, Veselin Raychev et al.CCS 2018 · 148 citations
Related papers
- Beyond Classification: Inferring Function Names in Stripped Binaries via Domain Adapted LLMsLinxi Jiang, Xin Jin, Zhiqiang LinNDSS 2025
- SymLM: Predicting Function Names in Stripped Binaries via Context-Sensitive Execution-Aware Code EmbeddingsXin Jin, Kexin Pei, Jun Yeon Won, Zhiqiang LinCCS 2022 · 56 citations
- BinRAG: An RAG-Based Decompilation Framework Fusing Name Prediction and Calling ContextWai Kin Wong, Daoyuan Wu, Zhibo Liu, Huaijin Wang et al.ISSTA 2026
- A lightweight framework for function name reassignment based on large-scale stripped binariesHan Gao, Shaoyin Cheng, Yinxing Xue, Weiming ZhangISSTA 2021 · 46 citations
- Enhancing Function Name Prediction using Votes-Based Name Tokenization and Multi-task LearningXiaoling Zhang, Zhengzi Xu, Shouguo Yang, Zhi Li et al.FSE 2024 · 5 citations
