On Mon, 4 Jan 2021 21:57:32 +0000, Pancho
 wrote:

>On 04/01/2021 17:51, gareth evans wrote:
>> On 04/01/2021 13:08, Pancho wrote:
>>> On 04/01/2021 11:00, gareth evans wrote:
>>>> Thinking back to my first job, nearly 50 years ago now,
>>>> when I had to dis-assemble DEC's paper tape BASIC
>>>> interpreter in order to enhance it, I guess that
>>>> dis-assemblers and decompilers must now be ten-a-penny,
>>>> especially for programs running under Windows where
>>>> the structure of Windows programs is well-known with
>>>> an assumption that C was the source language?
>>>>
>>>> But I wonder if Artificial Intelligence could, after
>>>> being fed with numerous instruction sets, take a
>>>> block of binary, and analyse its source without
>>>> any prior knowledge of the instruction set?
>>>>
>>>> I am particularly interested in the Binary Blob
>>>> provided for Raspberry Pi computers, with a view to
>>>> getting detailed knowledge of the video processors
>>>> employed therein.
>>>>
>>> I think a lot of the problem is defining the question.
>>>
>>> What do you want it to do?
>>>
>>
>> I don't want it to do anything. I want to play at a low level
>> with the thing ... large oaks from little acorns grow.
>>
>
>Play with what thing?

The pieces of the hardware supported by the Blob.

>What is an instruction set,

The list of binary codes that tell the procesor what to do.

>what is the Binary Blob?

On the Raspberry Pi it is the non-Open-Source proprietary code that is
provided by the chip manufacturer, including parts of the boot loader
and the 3D drivers among other things.

>Why do you need an AI?

Why not?

>Most compilers leave fingerprints on executables you don't need an AI to
>detect them. I remember decompiling in the early 80's but complex modern
>code can often be a challenge to naively reverse engineer a high level
>understanding from even if you do have source code. Take away sensible
>variable and function names and you are stuffed.

He's talking about something that you can give a pile of object code
from an unknown source (I mean _really_ unknown--it could be for Z/OS
or a VAX or Intel or Alpha or any other architecture, compiled from C
or PL/I or Fortran or pick a language at random, with it figuring from
there what the code does.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05