BLens: Contrastive Captioning of Binary Functions using Ensemble Embedding
Tristan Benoit
34th USENIX Security Symposium (USENIX Security '25) · Day 3 · Software Security 4: Fuzzing and Other Software Analysis
In the realm of reverse engineering, analyzing stripped binaries presents a formidable challenge. Without symbolic information, functions are often assigned generic, meaningless names, forcing engineers to meticulously inspect assembly or pseudocode to deduce their purpose. This process is not only time-consuming and tedious but also highly prone to errors, especially in large and complex software projects. The talk "BLens: Contrastive Captioning of Binary Functions using Ensemble Embedding," presented by Tristan Benoit, introduces a groundbreaking AI-driven solution to this pervasive problem.
AI review
Solid academic research that reframes binary function naming as image captioning — a genuinely clever framing that sidesteps real weaknesses in both recommender and translator approaches. The two-stage architecture (Combo + Lord) is well-motivated and technically differentiated, and 92% precision in cross-project settings is a number worth taking seriously. This is USENIX-grade work and it belongs there.