An Enhanced Opaque Predicate Detection Method with Synthesis and Recursive Matching

Program obfuscation transforms source code into a complex, harder-to-analyze form while preserving functionality, commonly used for intellectual property protection and security. Although it is also exploited by malware developers. Opaque predicate obfuscation increases program size by inserting junk code with conditional expressions that prevent execution. Existing deobfuscation methods rely on symbolic execution and SMT solvers but face limitations based on predicate types. This paper proposes a logic-based deobfuscation technique capable of handling Mixed Boolean Arithmetic obfuscation and dynamic opaque predicates using I/O analysis, program synthesis, and recursive matching. Experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms existing tools against obfuscation by Code Virtualizer, Tigress, and OLLVM.