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[libopcodes] Improper (but unlikely) opcode decoding


Hi,

http://www2.in.tum.de/bib/files/sepp12gdsl.pdf

I just read this paper from people from Munich about decoding opcodes and especially amd64 decoding. They have tried several disassembler in linear sweep and have identified an improper behavior of most of them when running into prefix decoding.

If you want to focus only on this improper decoding of libopcodes in the paper, I would advise to go directly to sections 3 and 4.2 (with a small stop at Fig. 4).

Still, the "bug" in libopcodes can be seen as a "feature", as the Intel manual itself says it should lead to an "unexpected behavior". But, you have to know that having this kind of prefix will be anyway executed by the processor (the incorrect prefix will be dropped). So, it might be an issue here (or not).

Regards
--
Emmanuel Fleury

Rule 8: Avoid captive user interfaces.
   -- Mike Gancarz (The UNIX Philosophy)


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