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The Cost of Understanding: LLM-Driven Reverse Engineering vs Iterative LLM Obfuscation

69
Academic
Chimera Difficulty Score
a synthesis of Flesch-Kincaid, Coleman-Liau, SMOG, and Dale-Chall readability metrics
Introduction Over the past few years, we have observed a significant evolution in the capabilities of LLMs to be productive and to carry out various tasks that address real-world problems, such as program synthesis, malware research, or vulnerability research. Specifically in the context of reverse engineering, LLMs are particularly effective given the right tools because they are very good at rea...
This study offers a fascinating snapshot of the evolving cat-and-mouse game between obfuscation techniques and LLM-driven reverse engineering. The findings underscore a critical tension: while LLMs like Claude Opus 4.6 demonstrate impressive capabilities in static analysis, their effectiveness diminishes rapidly when faced with layered obfuscation. The research highlights how even modest obfuscation can disrupt automated pipelines by exploiting LLM weaknesses—context window limitations, budget c...