Locate, Then Reason: End-to-End Patch Presence Testing in Stripped Binaries

Summary

PatchAlign is an end-to-end workflow for binary patch presence testing (PPT), which determines whether a security fix is present in a stripped binary. It first localizes patch-relevant code at large scale using instruction-aligned retrieval and caller-callee context, then uses an LLM to compare the target binary with vulnerable and patched references. The authors report that it localizes patch-relevant code and determines patch status without a target-location oracle.