"Knowledge-Based Software Reverse Engineering"

We propose to improve reverse engineering by automatically producing deeper and more useful program descriptions. Automatic program understanders use programming knowledge to recognize abstract concepts like "read-process loop" in existing programs. Our innovation is UNPROG, a unique and practical automatic program understander. We will evaluate the potential contribution of UNPROG to reverse engineering. A prototype reverse engineering tool will be created by combining UNPROG with a description generator. Automatically produced documentation will be evaluated for its conceptual content and usefulness.