It was early September, when I reached out to Professor Yener expressing my interest to be involved in security research. Now, a few months into this RCA research, I’m glad through happenstance I reached out.
Objective
Given a binary, is it possible to create a RCA (Root Cause Analysis) of a binary, given a PoC (Proof of Concept)
Necessary Background Definitions
First, what does RCA even mean? RCA, also known as Root Cause Analysis, is a consise report of why a system encountered an issue. In this research, the system will be a binary, and the issue will be a crash triggered by a PoC. This PoC will be either static, in the form of a .poc file, or it’ll be dynamic, in form of a .py file. Ideally, for a closed-loop, better system,
Background
What is root-cause analysis, specifically of binaries?
Cursory Research
Creating A Idealized System Overview
Iteration 1: The Sanity Check
Iteration 2: Attempt At Future-Proofing
Iteration 3: The Unintentional Over-engineering
Iteration 4: Back-To-Basics
Case Analysis (HTB Cyber Apocolypse 2025)
Future Steps
2. Testing With Local Models
3. Testing With Bigger Models via openrouter.com
High-level overview
- Professor / Master Agent
- Student / Slave Agent(s)