How to objdump and prune a kernel?

[Tiancheng-htc]

As written in your paper, you use objdump to extract the assembly code from the binary file. Can you get the assembly code of closed-source libraries? I can not know the principle of it.

[huangs0]

Yes, Neutrino can extract assembly from the binary file but we might not be able to extract assembly code from closed-source libraries.

The principle lies in the compilation mechanism with the -g flag. Basically, -g flag will embed the assembly as a text session in the compiled ELF, originally for tools like GDB to use. Neutrino simply use objdump toolchains to extract the assembly from text sessions of ELF (CUDA Executable or Shared Library).

For security reasons, developers can choose to no embed Assembly (Machine Code only) or compress Assembly. Under these two scenarios, Neutrino cannot work.

[Tiancheng-htc]

Thanks for your reply, I get the idea.