Deterministic static recovery with disrobe

Decompile, deobfuscate, and unpack compiled software through one evidence-tracked command line.

disrobe is a Rust command-line suite for static software recovery. It handles source obfuscation, bytecode, frozen applications, managed assemblies, native binaries, packers, archives, firmware, and compiled webview frontends. The default path never executes the sample. One opt-in PyArmor v6/v7 fallback does execute it and requires --allow-dynamic; use that path only inside an isolated sandbox.

Try it in your browser: the disrobe playground. Decompile a .pyc, scan a pickle for malicious reduce callables, and summarize a .wasm module, all client-side, with the core passes compiled to WebAssembly. Nothing is uploaded.

The live catalog spans 15 ecosystems: Python, JavaScript and TypeScript, WebAssembly, JVM and Android, .NET, native PE/ELF/Mach-O/NE, Go, Lua, PHP, Ruby, Erlang and Elixir on BEAM, Swift and Objective-C, ActionScript 3, mobile runtimes, and shell languages. The implemented native-packer tier currently lists Donut, sRDI, UPX, ASPack, Petite, MPRESS, FSG, PECompact, Yoda's Crypter, NSPack, MEW, kkrunchy. Run disrobe catalog [ecosystem] for the per-family recovery tier compiled into your binary.

Guarantees and boundaries

• No model runs in the recovery path. Metadata bundles are deterministic structured data for downstream tools.
• Output ordering and serialization are deterministic. A committed gate hashes three real fixture recoveries across Linux, macOS, Windows, and the batch runner at one and four workers. This evidence does not claim that three fixtures prove every possible input.
• The main CLI ships as one Rust binary. In-house paths launch no external program. Commands with optional backends can invoke installed tools when you select a backend or use that command's --backend auto policy.
• The shared artifact layer can store recovered state in a content-addressed .dr envelope with an rkyv payload, postcard sidecar, and BLAKE3 root. Chain runs record topology and per-stage provenance separately.
• Python recovery is measured at 95.09% per-code-object equivalence on the full CPython 3.14 stdlib (17378 of 18276), plus 96.53% on the pinned 200-module corpus (6068 of 6286). These figures describe their stated populations, not every Python program.

Who this is for

• Malware analysts and incident responders who receive a packed, frozen, or obfuscated sample and need to read what it does, without executing it.
• Security researchers auditing a closed binary for interoperability or vulnerability research.
• Developers recovering their own lost source from a shipped .pyc, .jar, .dll, or bundled .js.
• Tooling authors who need the Rust crates, typed Python bindings, daemon protocols, metadata bundles, or browser playground.

Choose the reachable surface

disrobe auto can run only the pass IDs registered in that build. disrobe passes prints those IDs, their ecosystem, and their support tier. Direct commands expose additional operations that are not auto-chain passes, including recon, taint analysis, optional external decompilers, and disrobe webview for Electron, Tauri, and Wails frontend recovery. Use disrobe --help for direct commands and disrobe catalog [ecosystem] for recognized families.

In-house recovery remains available without optional toolchains. JVM, Android, .NET, and native commands can also use installed tools such as CFR, Vineflower, jadx, ILSpy, de4dot, or Ghidra where their command-specific backend policy allows it. disrobe doctor reports what is installed; it does not make an unavailable backend part of an in-house result.

Measured recovery

Every figure below comes from a committed test gate or a local measurement harness. strong figures are graded against an independent oracle; coverage-self-reported figures state the inspected population and count disrobe's own output. The full per-value sourcing lives in xtask/data/recovery.json.

Colour and tag together state how each bar was checked. A lighter bar means a stronger reference could have rejected the number, a filled mark means a committed gate reproduces it on every run, and a hollow mark means the input stays outside the tree.

The numbers that are not perfect are labeled SEMANTIC, PARTIAL, or SKELETON. Native-virtualized code, runtime-only keys, and RSA-wrapped capsule keys remain detect-only when the required information is absent from the input.

Refusal is a result

disrobe refuses to emit a recovery it cannot justify from the input. A refusal names its reason and is a normal, expected outcome, not a failure of the run.

The rule behind it: a wrong recovery costs more than no recovery. A reader who receives output assumes it describes the input, so output that merely looks plausible is worse than a refusal that says what was missing. Two consequences follow, and both are deliberate.

Evidence that is only probable does not become a result. Where several readings of the same bytes are equally consistent with the input, disrobe reports the ambiguity instead of choosing the likeliest one. A native function compiled to a single return instruction, for example, cannot be distinguished from several different source signatures on its own bytes, so it is refused unless a caller in the same object proves which one applies.

A refusal is scoped to the evidence, not to the problem. "Not recoverable from this input" is a claim about the bytes supplied; a wider input set can reopen it. A key that exists solely at run time is reported as a static-recovery limit.

Where to start

• First run: Installation, then Quickstart.
• The design: Architecture overview, then the five-rung IR ladder.
• One language: its language guide.
• The full family list: the supported families catalog, or disrobe catalog [ecosystem].
• Triage of stripped code or recovered source: queryable IR and capabilities and recon, prowl, and indicators.
• Embedding: Use it as a library, or the browser playground first.
• An exact command or flag: the CLI command reference.
• Untrusted samples: Forensics and malware-safety posture, before anything else.