Deterministic Fully-Static Whole-Binary Translation Without Heuristics
Mirrored from Hacker News — AI on Front Page for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.
Computer Science > Cryptography and Security
arXiv:2605.08419 (cs)
[Submitted on 8 May 2026]
Title:Deterministic Fully-Static Whole-Binary Translation without Heuristics
View a PDF of the paper titled Deterministic Fully-Static Whole-Binary Translation without Heuristics, by Hongyu Chen and 2 other authors
View PDF
HTML (experimental)
Abstract:We present Elevator, the first binary translator that statically translates entire x86-64 executables to AArch64 without debug information, source code, or assumptions about code layout. Unlike existing systems, which rely on heuristics or runtime fallbacks to handle code-versus-data decoding errors, Elevator considers all possible interpretations of every byte and produces a separate translation for each feasible one ahead of time. Any byte may be interpreted as data, an opcode, or an opcode argument; we generate separate control flow paths for all interpretations, pruning only those leading to abnormal termination.
Translations are built by composing code "tiles" automatically derived from a high-level description of the source ISA, yielding a nimble translation framework. The approach is deterministic and produces complete, self-contained binaries with no runtime component in the trusted code base. The principal cost is substantial code size expansion. The key benefit is that the output is the actual code that will run, enabling testing, validation, certification, and cryptographic signing prior to deployment, reducing risk compared to emulators or JIT compilers.
We evaluate Elevator on a diverse corpus of real-world binaries, including the entire SPECint 2006 suite, demonstrating that static full-program binary translation can be both reliable and practical. Elevator achieves performance on par with or better than QEMU's user-mode JIT emulation.
| Subjects: | Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Programming Languages (cs.PL) |
| Cite as: | arXiv:2605.08419 [cs.CR] |
| (or arXiv:2605.08419v1 [cs.CR] for this version) | |
| https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.08419
arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
|
Full-text links:
Access Paper:
- View PDF
- HTML (experimental)
- TeX Source
View a PDF of the paper titled Deterministic Fully-Static Whole-Binary Translation without Heuristics, by Hongyu Chen and 2 other authors
References & Citations
Loading...
Bookmark
Bibliographic Tools
Code, Data, Media
Demos
Related Papers
About arXivLabs
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer Toggle
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers Toggle
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps Toggle
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite.ai Toggle
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv Toggle
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
Links to Code Toggle
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub Toggle
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
GotitPub Toggle
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Huggingface Toggle
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
ScienceCast Toggle
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Replicate Toggle
Replicate (What is Replicate?)
Spaces Toggle
Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)
Spaces Toggle
TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)
Recommenders and Search Tools
Link to Influence Flower
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
Core recommender toggle
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.
Discussion (0)
Sign in to join the discussion. Free account, 30 seconds — email code or GitHub.
Sign in →No comments yet. Sign in and be the first to say something.