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binja-diff

★ 68 Open GitHub ↗

Binary Ninja diffing tool

// repository documentation

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# Binary Diff

A Binary Ninja plugin for side-by-side binary diffing, powered by
[QBinDiff](https://github.com/quarkslab/qbindiff).

Drop a second binary onto the diff view and the plugin loads it, analyzes it,
matches its functions against the current binary, and shows the differences at
five levels: control flow graph, assembly, LLIL, MLIL and HLIL.

![Capture](https://matteyeux.com/images/binja-diff2.png)

## Features

- No other tools required
- Supports BNDB import
- Control flow graph, disassembly, LLIL, MLIL and HLIL diffing views
- Save and restore diffs from the BNDB or json file
- Port function names from one binary to the other
- Diff a single kext from a kernelcache, or one SEP module

## Requirements

- Python 3.10+
- [QBinDiff](https://github.com/quarkslab/qbindiff)

On Linux, QBinDiff also loads the system `libmagic` through `python-magic`, you may need to install `libmagic1` on Debian-based systems

### Linux aarch64 is not supported

`lapjv`, which QBinDiff uses for the linear assignment step, has **no working build on Linux aarch64** ([src-d/lapjv#90](https://github.com/src-d/lapjv/issues/90)): QBinDiff pulls in `lapjv-numpy2` there and that package is x86-only. macOS gets `lapx` instead and is unaffected. Testing has been done on **macOS and Linux x86-64**.

## Installation

I usually make symlinks:
```bash
# macOS
ln -s "$PWD" ~/Library/Application\ Support/Binary\ Ninja/plugins/binja-diff
# Linux
ln -s "$PWD" ~/.binaryninja/plugins/binja-diff
```

Restart Binary Ninja, then open a binary and pick **Diff** from the view type
dropdown at the bottom left, or use **Plugins > Binary Diff**.

## Usage

Drag a binary anywhere onto the drop zone, or click **Choose file...**.

![Capture](https://matteyeux.com/images/binja-diff1.png)

Expect this to take a while on real firmware. Matching is quadratic in the
number of functions. sep-firmware M5 26.5 against 26.5.2 takes about 38 minutes.
Saving the result is worth it: restoring one costs only the reload of the second
binary.

### Reading the diff

| Status | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| identical | no differing instructions at all |
| offsets only | only addresses, immediates, stack offsets or register choice differ |
| changed | at least one real instruction difference |
| differs | too large to classify while scrolling; open it to see |

| Marker | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| (blank) | identical |
| `~` | same operation, an operand spelled differently |
| `!` | genuinely different operation |
| `+` | present only in the secondary |
| `-` | present only in the primary |

### Dev

Ensure you run pre-commit before contributing
```bash
uv run pre-commit install
```

binja-diff

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