A proposed methodology for decompilation of binary programs is presented, along with a description of a particular implementation of this methodology, dcc. dcc is a decompiler for the Intel 80x86 architecture, which takes as input a binary program from a DOS environment and produces C programs as output. The decompiler has been divided into three separate modules which resemble the structure of the compiler. The front-end module is machine dependent and performs the loading and parsing of the program, as well as the generation of an intermediate representation. The universal decompiling machine module is machine and language independent, and performs all the flow analysis of the program. Finally, the back-end module is language dependent and deals with the details of the target high level language. Even though the problem of decompilation is insoluble in general, a partial solution can be found, which gives information about the binary program. This paper describes some of the results ...

We present the main recommendations of the Copyright Law Review Committee in its submission to the Australian Government in 1995 in relation to the protection of computer software in Australia and the intellectual property of software developers in this country. The implications of these recommendations to the academic and industry computer science community are presented, as well as comparisons with European and US legislation. 1 Introduction In Australia, computer programs have been protected by copyright as literary works under the Copyright Act [16] since 1984 when the Act was amended to specifically include software. However, the 1984 amendments [17] were regarded as a short-term measure and there was doubt about whether they were effective in ensuring that all computer programs were protected by copyright. As a result, the question of copyright protection of computer programs was referred to the Copyright Law Review Committee (herein referred to as the CLRC or the Committee) for...