Heros in Action: Analyzing Objective-C Binaries through Decompilation and IFDS
This paper demonstrates static taint analysis on Objective-C binaries through the integration of the Ghidra framework with the Heros IFDS solver, achieving an inter-procedural, field-sensitive and flow-sensitive analysis. Our contributions include two plugins: one extending Ghidra Objective-C capabilities to improve decompilation accuracy, and another integrating the Heros framework for inter-procedural taint analysis on Ghidra Intermediate Representation (IR).To assess our approach, we introduce a new benchmark suite tailored to Objective-C, covering diverse dataflow challenges and promoting further community-driven research. By leveraging existing frameworks, this work demonstrates how established static analysis techniques can be adapted to binary targets, laying a groundwork for advancements in Objective-C binary analysis.
Authors
- Florian Magin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0003-2858-9873)
- Gwendal Patat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3232-0263)
- Fabian Scherf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8901-8045)
Institutions
- Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (DE)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-04-29
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/static66697.2025.00005
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Leadership, Courage, and Heroism Studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.44
Funders
- Ministry of Higher Education