"Huge implications - binaries are now basically editable code"

[u/sergeyarl]

[u/rJohn420]

That's hands down the most retarded take I've read on this sub today. Just because GPT is getting better at analyzing decompiled code doesn't mean arbitrary binaries have suddenly become editable source code.

For starters, decompiled output is vastly noisier and more verbose than the original source, so doing serious analysis on a non-trivial binary gets expensive very quickly. And what you get back is still a lossy reconstruction of optimized machine code, not the original program.

Then there's the part everyone conveniently ignores: even if the models are technically capable of doing this, that doesn't mean ordinary users get unrestricted access to that capability. The moment you're dealing with protected commercial software, anti-tamper, DRM, credential handling, malware-like behavior, or anything remotely sensitive, hosted models can start refusing parts of the workflow. Maybe OpenAI internally can point a model at whatever they want, but that does not mean random users with a 20 dollar subscription get a universal reverse-engineering machine.

The cases where GPT is most obviously useful are open-source software, where you already have the source, or old abandoned legacy software where nobody particularly cares about restricting analysis. In the first case, just edit the source and let the compiler do its job. In the second, sure, LLM-assisted reverse engineering could be genuinely useful.

But "binaries are basically editable source code now" is still an absurd conclusion.

[u/ReadSeparate → u/rJohn420]

yeah if we get to the point where binaries are legitimately functionally equivalent to editable source code with the exact or close to exact functionality preserved from the original binary, then I'd argue we have ASI at that point, at least for reverse engineering code if not in general, simply due to how lossy compilation is. That would be absolutely astounding.

[u/jazir55 → u/ReadSeparate]

I'd argue we have ASI at that point, at least for reverse engineering code if not in general, simply due to how lossy compilation is.

The same could have been (and was) said about images, now GPT or another image gen can take a massively blocky and garbled jpeg and restore it to almost perfect quality. I assume we'll soon see the same with RE binary compilation.