DnD: A Cross-Architecture Deep Neural Network Decompiler

The usage of Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) has steadily increased in recent years. Especially when used in edge devices, dedicated DNN compilers are used to compile DNNs into binaries. Many security applications (such as DNN model extraction, white-box adversarial sample generation, and DNN model patching and hardening) are possible when a DNN model is accessible. However, these techniques cannot be applied to compiled DNNs. Unfortunately, no dedicated decompiler exists that is able to recover a high-level representation of a DNN starting from its compiled binary code.

To address this issue, we propose DnD, the first compiler- and ISA-agnostic DNN decompiler. DnD uses symbolic execution, in conjunction with a dedicated loop analysis, to lift the analyzed binary code into a novel intermediate representation, able to express the high-level mathematical DNN operations in a compiler- and ISA-agnostic way. Then, DnD matches the extracted mathematical DNN operations with template mathematical DNN operations, and it recovers hyper-parameters and parameters of all the identified DNN operators, as well as the overall DNN topology. Our evaluation shows that DnD can perfectly recover different DNN models, extracting them from binaries compiled by two different compilers (Glow and TVM) for three different ISAs (Thumb, AArch64, and x86-64). Moreover, DnD enables extracting the DNN models used by real-world micro-controllers and attacking them using white-box adversarial machine learning techniques.