BinDSA: Efficient, Precise Binary-Level Pointer Analysis with Context-Sensitive Heap Reconstruction

Pointer analysis serves as a fundamental component in the realm of binary code reverse engineering. It can be leveraged to reconstruct a binary program's call graph and can be further applied to various security analyses. However, the absence of symbols and type information within binary code presents formidable challenges to effective pointer analysis. Existing works often apply approximations when performing pointer analysis on binary. Nevertheless, these methods tend to be inefficient and produce numerous false positive targets. In this paper, we propose BinDSA, a novel model tailored for binary pointer analysis. BinDSA prioritizes precision and efficiency over soundness. It is field-and context-sensitive, employing unification-based techniques and reconstructing a context-sensitive heap. It jointly recovers data structure and points-to relations so that precision can be further improved. In evaluation, we demonstrate that BinDSA is 5 times more efficient and notably more precise than the current state-of-the-art technique without significantly sacrificing soundness. We also apply BinDSA on CVE reachability analysis and vulnerability detection, demonstrating its effective application to security tasks. CCS Concepts: • Security and privacy → Software reverse engineering; • Software and its engineering → Automated static analysis.