Remill

Remill is a static binary translator that translates machine code instructions into LLVM bitcode. It translates AArch64 (64-bit ARMv8), SPARC32 (SPARCv8), SPARC64 (SPARCv9), x86 and amd64 machine code (including AVX and AVX512) into LLVM bitcode. AArch32 (32-bit ARMv8 / ARMv7) support is underway.

Remill focuses on accurately lifting instructions. It is meant to be used as a library for other tools, e.g. McSema.

Build Status

Additional Documentation

• How to contribute
• How to implement the semantics of an instruction
• How instructions are lifted
• The design and architecture of Remill

Getting Help

If you are experiencing undocumented problems with Remill then ask for help in the #binary-lifting channel of the Empire Hacking Slack.

Supported Platforms

Remill is supported on Linux platforms and has been tested on Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, and 18.04. Remill also works on macOS, and has experimental support for Windows.

Remill's Linux version can also be built via Docker for quicker testing.

Dependencies

Most of Remill's dependencies can be provided by the cxx-common repository. Trail of Bits hosts downloadable, pre-built versions of cxx-common, which makes it substantially easier to get up and running with Remill. Nonetheless, the following table represents most of Remill's dependencies.

Name	Version
Git	Latest
CMake	3.2+
Google Flags	Latest
Google Log	Latest
Google Test	Latest
LLVM	3.5+
Clang	3.5+
Intel XED	Latest
Python	2.7
Unzip	Latest
ccache	Latest

Getting and Building the Code

Docker Build

Remill now comes with a Dockerfile for easier testing. This Dockerfile references the cxx-common container to have all pre-requisite libraries available.

The Dockerfile allows for quick builds of multiple supported LLVM, architecture, and Linux configurations.

Quickstart (builds Remill against LLVM 8.0 on Ubuntu 18.04 for AMD64):

Clone Remill:

#Clone the repository.
git clone https://github.com/lifting-bits/remill.git
cd remill

Build Remill Docker container:

# do the build
docker build . -t remill:llvm800-ubuntu18.04-amd64 \
     -f Dockerfile \
     --build-arg UBUNTU_VERSION=18.04 \
     --build-arg ARCH=amd64 \
     --build-arg LLVM_VERSION=800

Ensure remill works:

# Decode some AMD64 instructions to LLVM
docker run --rm -it remill:llvm800-ubuntu18.04-amd64 \
     --arch amd64 --ir_out /dev/stdout --bytes c704ba01000000
     
# Decode some AArch64 instructions to LLVM
docker run --rm -it remill:llvm800-ubuntu18.04-amd64 \
     --arch aarch64 --address 0x400544 --ir_out /dev/stdout \
     --bytes FD7BBFA90000009000601891FD030091B7FFFF97E0031F2AFD7BC1A8C0035FD6

On Linux

First, update aptitude and get install the baseline dependencies.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get install \
     git \
     python2.7 \
     wget \
     curl \
     build-essential \
     libtinfo-dev \
     lsb-release \
     zlib1g-dev \
     ccache

# Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04
sudo apt-get install realpath

Next, clone the repository. This will clone the code into the remill directory.

git clone https://github.com/lifting-bits/remill.git

Next, we build Remill. This script will create another directory, remill-build, in the current working directory. All remaining dependencies needed by Remill will be built in the remill-build directory.

./remill/scripts/build.sh

Next, we can install Remill. Remill itself is a library, and so there is no real way to try it. However, you can head on over to the McSema repository, which uses Remill for lifting instructions.

cd ./remill-build
sudo make install

We can also build and run Remill's test suite.

cd ./remill-build
make test_dependencies
make test