When LLM Decompilers Recompile More and Preserve Less
2026-09-07 12:00Science🔥 42.2 heat score
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The study proposes the Decompile-Diverge tool to detect the issue where LLM decompilers lose key behaviors during code refactoring. Tests based on eight systems, nine configurations, and real GitHub function and CVE vulnerability data revealed that although the refactoring rate increased from 75% to 90% with Ghidra, the behavior matching rate dropped to 62%. Among 300 test cases, the overall difference rate was 4.9%, with some systems reaching up to 13%. Refactored code with disclosed vulnerabilities completely lacked crash traces. Existing testing suites could not detect such failures, while the new tool identifies deviations by comparing the behavior changes of refactored code under the same inputs using synthetic drivers and fuzzy testing datasets. Analysis shows that this divergence stems from LLMs replacing unknown placeholders left by traditional tools with introduced fields, types, call relationships, and guard conditions.