Multiple issues while interacting with functions defined on top of one another

Open
#4,429 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
32/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
cpp

Research direction

Start by reproducing the overlapping-function scenario described in the issue: define two functions at one address, set a tag on the second, navigate to it, and observe view updates during analysis. Trace the affected navigation, tag, and analysis-refresh entry points; done means each action remains associated with the correct function rather than always selecting the first.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Component: UI Effort: Medium Impact: Medium

Version and Platform (required):

  • Binary Ninja Version: 3.5.4322-dev
  • OS: macOS
  • OS Version: 13.4
  • CPU Architecture: ARM64

Bug Description:
I've been working on a few databases lately that have had multiple functions defined on top of each other, either erroneously or intentionally. Many user actions (such as navigation) will assume there is exactly one function at a given address and will navigate you to the first function, rather than to the function that your user action actually corresponds to.

An example of this is having a tag set on the second function and trying to navigate there. It will send you to the first function instead.

Another example is the view updating during analysis: It'll just refresh your window into the first function, which is exceptionally disorienting.

Since we support overlapping functions as a key feature that differentiates us from competitors like IDA (which, at least the last time I used it professionally, did not handle this in the slightest), we should make sure that this support works and that we aren't accidentally baking bad assumptions into the codebase when we're making changes and bugfixes.

Steps To Reproduce:

  1. Define two functions, one on top of the other.
  2. Perform actions on the second of the two functions and observe all of the places where it's obvious that we assume Highlander rules apply.
  3. ???
  4. PROFIT!

Expected Behavior:
In all cases, if I am performing an action where the data upon which that action is taking place resides in one function, and not another, we should perform that action on the correct function despite the address existing in multiple.

Screenshots:
Somewhat difficult to take screenshots of some of this, but if anyone wants a video or in-person demo, I'm happy to put in the extra work.

Dominant language
C++
Stars
1.3k
Forks
298
Avg merge
5d 5h
Merged PRs (30d)
19

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.

More from Vector35/binaryninja-api

All issues in Vector35/binaryninja-api

Similar issues

More C++ issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.