Since its debut last month, DecBench has gotten 3 submissions for new decompilers from the community. Find them on the site; it's exciting to see the community rally to compete, from both private companies and practitioners. In other news, we now have stable links for snapshots

Kuna, the self-refining decompiler project, is still going and is on v1.160. This week, we got some better support in the Ghidra GUI. You can use Kuna in Ghidra, hopefully with better decompilation, for free! The image shows the Kuna core and Sleigh core swapped in Ghidra 12.1.2.

LLMs are changing the way we collaborate while reverse engineering. A new guest post by me for Hex-Rays explores the idea, how it may shape decompilers, and how it shapes how we work together (humans and AI alike). Go check it out!

LLMs Have Reshaped How We Think About Decompilation and Collaboration

How AI agents are reshaping reverse engineering, from decompiler collaboration to the way we approach hacking challenges.

hex-rays.com

I'd like to introduce Kuna, a new Rust-based decompiler that explores a highly experimental direction: self-refining decompiler development and usage. Or: a decompiler constantly improved by agents, made for agents. Kuna rivals the best in structuring now. Let's talk about it.1/

LLMs are so dang crafty. Investigated some cheating by Claude Code (CC) on the DecBench. On an optimized binary, without web search, and only objdump, CC identified the project and function name, a nearly byte-for-byte match. Codex did not do this.

We are approaching perfect binary decompilation, and, crazier still, LLMs may soon be the best decompilers on the planet. I'd like to introduce DecBench, an evaluation site to determine how close we are to completing the field of perfect decompilation. Links and more in 🧵

Agents need better tools for reversing! I'm releasing declib (previously libbs), with a new CLI today that gives agents CLI access to 4 decompilers (IDA, Ghidra, Binja, angr), parity feature support to most MCP (12 features), and the ability to sync those changes across decs!

libbs decompiler: cross-decompiler type sync (IDA -> Ghidra)

Recorded by mahaloz

asciinema.org

Binary hacking is something of an art, and AI has been getting significantly better at it. But do the limitations of our foundational tools, like decompilers, limit their ability to hack? Check out my talk that is now public on the topic:

Zion Leonahenahe Basque | Your AI Is Only as Smart as Your Decompiler: Bin Hacking with LLMs

DistrictCon 2026 - Saturday, Track 1 Zion Leonahenahe Basque | Your AI Is Only as Smart as Your Decompiler: Binary Hacking in the Age of LLMs

youtu.be

For years, Rust binaries made reversing a nightmare. Modern decompilers only support C, lacking meaningful types, constructs, and language-specific functions. Led by @34r7hm4n, we're releasing our S&P work Oxidizer, the first deep Rust decompiler, built on angr! Interested? 🧵👇

Our plugin, BinSync, won second place! To date, BinSync is one of the most comprehensive synchronization tools for cross-decompiler (and soon AI) collaboration on the planet. We are honored to win the award and to make it better with every commit!

Hex-Rays@hex-rays.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We are thrilled to announce Hex-Rays' Plugin Contest winners! 🥇 1st Place: iOSHelper 🥈 2nd Place: BinSync 🥉 3rd Place: CrystalRE Check out the winning plugins, honorable mentions & all other submissions. Install these plugins today with a single command via hcli. hex-rays.com/plugin-conte...

I did not record my live defense, but it turns out I did have a recording of a practice talk I did the day before that is nearly the same! Check it out if you were curious about my defense: youtu.be/lqOyeOFA6J8... Also, my dissertation is now public 🎉: www.zionbasque.com/f...

Toward a Science of Software Reverse Engineering (Defense)

On March 30th, 2026, I defended (and passed!) my PhD dissertation, "Toward a Science of Software Reverse Engineering." That talk was not recorded, but this is a nearly exact practice run I did the day before. I hope you enjoy the talk; it encompasses my life as a hackademic for the last 5 years!

youtu.be

We have achieved PGD (Perfect General Decompilation) internally 🚀🚀🚀!!!1!

I passed my defense! After a small celebration, it's time to get back to work. Too many supply chain attacks in one year...

It's time to wrap things up! On Monday at 4 pm MST, I'll be streaming my PhD defense! Come one, come all! The talk is titled "Toward a Science of Software Reverse Engineering". Twitch:

maha1oz Schedule - Twitch

Check out maha1oz stream schedule, and set reminders so you don’t miss out!

twitch.tv

This Fall, I’m joining the University of Georgia as an Assistant Professor! I want to push on the fundamentals of software reverse engineering, from decompilation to how humans actually understand code. I’m looking for PhD students, collaborators, and sponsors. More below.

At the 2025 @ACSAC_Conf a subgroup of @shellphish from ASU and University of Hawaii at Manoa put together a banger CTF, themed after the legendary navigator Hawaiʻiloa, who found Hawaiʻi by following the stars. Play our CTF on pwn.college: pwn.college/acsac-ct...

BinSync has remained the main way to synchronize reversing across multiple people and decompilers (IDA, Binja, Ghidra, angr). It supports science, new plugins, and is active. Show your love as we compete in @HexRaysSA plugin contest this year 👍 🔁.

BinSync

A binary-analysis collaboration platform

binsync.net

Happy New Year's Eve! Our tool for placing decompilation (symbols, source, types) into the debugger (gdb) is now officially integrated into pwndbg! You will have access to it (decomp2dbg) in your next default install of pwndbg 🎉 Happy hacking:

Reimplement decompiler integration by k4lizen · Pull Request #3401 · pwndbg/pwndbg

Okay this is a chonker. See the docs/tutorials/decompiler-integration.md for some overview. And docs/assets/caps/decomp_integration_ex.png for an image example vs previous implementation pros we d...

github.com

Do LLMs actually help hackers reverse engineer and understand the software they want to exploit? We ran the first fine-grained human study of LLMs + reverse engineering. To appear at NDSS 2026. Interested? Some quick findings in 🧵👇 Paper: www.zionbasque.com/f...

If you're around at ACSAC today through Friday, come say hi, and we can yap about cool program analysis techniques. I'll also be around to host the 2nd ACSAC CTF, which we will announce more about tomorrow 🔥.

It's been quite some time since I've changed my profile picture, but it feels right. Ideally, it is now easier to recognize me at conferences. I'm no longer the pixel guy! Looking forward to more changes as I move forward in my research and career.

You've seen the trends in AIxCC: LLMs can hack source, find vulns, and patch them. But what about on binaries without source? Do decompilers close the gap, or is there more to grow? Come see my talk at DistrctCon where I merge and dissect these two fields: AI Hacking + Decomp.

It's been about a week since we completed DARPA's AIxCC, where we came in 5th and had the most accurate autonomous patching system in the competition. In the coming days, I'll be describing how we achieved it on the patching side. Stay tuned. Our CRS:

GitHub - shellphish/artiphishell

Contribute to shellphish/artiphishell development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

It's hard to believe that AIxCC is coming to a close. For us, it can be summarized in $3 million in funding, 2 years of work, and 290k LoC. Our system, Artiphishell, is a first step towards AI-driven software understanding and action. Excited to hear the results at DEFCON!

Almost out of time to submit! We're looking for all cutting-edge research in the area of reversing and understanding software. Join us in changing the status quo of understanding programs.

ACM SURE Workshop@sureworkshop.bsky.social · last yr.

We're rapidly approaching the deadline on July 7th at 11:59 p.m. AoE for our CFP. Software must be understood, and we need your research to do it! sure-workshop.org/

I am very grateful to have been part of the panel at REcon. Like last year, I find myself leaving @reconmtl inspired and motivated to keep pushing forward in my research. Thanks again for all the awesome conversations, everyone. Hope to see you all next year.

As is workshop tradition, we will be extending the deadline for our CFP until July 7th (hard deadline). We're excited to see the work you all have cooking 🧑‍🍳🔥

a cartoon of a clock with the word trendizisst at the bottom

ALT: a cartoon of a clock with the word trendizisst at the bottom

media.tenor.com

🔎🛠️ Calling all reverse engineers & code explorers! Bring the research that cracks open the secrets of programs to #SURE25. CFP closes in 3 weeks—submit now and help shape the future of Software Understanding & Reverse Engineering. sure-workshop.org/

What does it mean to be a hacker? This semester, I taught a hacker history and culture class, which was a blast. In one assignment, my students paid tribute to the classic @phrack Pro-Phile -- a small bio on a famous hacker. Check out their pieces: cse194.mahaloz.re/pr...

I'm proud to announce that myself and @AtipriyaBajaj have created the Workshop on Software Understanding and Reverse Engineering (SURE), which will be co-located at CCS 2025. sure-workshop.org/ Please follow our workshop account @sureworkshop and RT it for visibility :).