Vector35 / Vector35/binaryninja-api

Analyzing Windows binary from 1996 is slow and might cause lockups

Open
#2,998 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Component: Core Effort: Medium Impact: Medium
Dominant language
C++
Stars
1.3k
Forks
298
Avg merge
5d 5h
Merged PRs (30d)
19

Description

Version and Platform (required):

  • Binary Ninja Version: 3271-dev
  • OS: Windows
  • OS Version: 11

Bug Description:
Analyzing this binary takes forever, despite it not being overly large. Peter said it finished, then crashed on him.

Steps To Reproduce:
Please provide all steps required to reproduce the behavior:

  1. Download hearts.exe from https://archive.org/details/MicrosoftHearts
  2. Open as x86/windows-x86
  3. Watch memory usage spikes and it take a really long time
  4. If it finishes analyzing, navigate from raw to mapped view and back and it might freeze (reported by Peter)

Expected Behavior:
A reasonable amount of cpu and memory is consumed to analyze this binary.

Contributor guide

No contributing guide indexed for this repository

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce with hearts.exe from the MicrosoftHearts archive, opening it as x86/windows-x86 and observing analysis, memory usage, and navigation between raw and mapped views. Start by identifying the analysis and view-transition entry points involved; done means the binary analyzes with reasonable resource use and does not crash or freeze when switching views.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
operating-systems, performance, reverse-engineering
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
30/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.