[Valgrind-users] x86 to VEX translation process

[Jon S. <ste...@em...>]

Hello all,
I am a student at the University of Arizona doing research with Dr. Debray
relating to computer security. We have been discussing a way to
automatically generate taint propagation policies for a given x86
instruction. This process would be similar to the translation process from
x86 to VEX and so we were wondering if anyone could provide us with more
information about how that was done. From what I understand from reading
various papers on valgrind, each instruction in x86 is encoded using VEX
micro-operations that represent the computation performed by that
instruction. If this is the case, was there some way of automating (or
semi-automating) the process of creating the equivalent VEX operations, or
were they all hand-written? Additionally, in the VEX source code, is there
a file that includes the VEX micro-operations that correlate with a given
x86 instruction?

Any information would be greatly appreciated,
Jon Stephens