Calls: Send in your ideas. Deadline April 1, 2024
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Grant
Theme fund: Binary Analysis Fund
Start: 2022-06

Serialization in Kaitai Struct for Java and Python

Declaratively modify and create complex binary file formats

Kaitai Struct (KS) is a tool for working with binary formats. It introduces a declarative domain-specific language for describing the structure of arbitrary binary formats. Over 170 formats are already described in the official format gallery. Based on any specification, KS can automatically generate a ready-to-use parsing module in one of 11 programming languages (C++/STL, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Lua, Nim, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby). The current state of KS only allows you to extract data from binary files (parsing). However, in many cases, the opposite direction is also needed, i.e. to modify the data in the binary files or to create new ones (serialization). It is a logical extension to KS that allows new uses of written format specifications. This is by far the most requested feature in KS for a long time. Its absence prevents many users from using KS to its full potential. The goal is to add stable serialization support to the KS project. This will involve extending the compiler, adding support for serialization in runtime libraries, and building an automated testing infrastructure for serialization. This project will implement serialization for Java and Python.