AwesomeREA.org

2021 · Conference paper

NetPlier: Probabilistic Network Protocol Reverse Engineering from Message Traces

Yapeng Ye; Zhuo Zhang; Fei Wang; Xiangyu Zhang; Dongyan Xu

Uses multiple sequence alignment and probabilistic keyword-field inference to cluster network messages by type, evaluated across ten protocols with downstream format and state-machine analysis.

Scope and limitations

Requires unencrypted traces and cannot recover unseen message types. Larger alignments, sub-byte keywords and one-way traffic can reduce accuracy. Format/FSM inference is downstream evaluation rather than the main contribution; state semantics in a case study were manually annotated. These models do not establish complete application/device reconstruction.

Why it fits this collection

Connects observed application/device traffic to message-type models needed for protocol reconstruction.

Publication and review details

Venue
NDSS 2021
Status
Conference paper
Publication / posting date
2021 (exact date not verified)
Date source
Publisher-deposited Crossref metadata supplies publication year 2021; the publisher PDF separately identifies the 21–25 February 2021 symposium.
DOI
10.14722/ndss.2021.24531

The publisher paper cites netplier-tool/NetPlier, which now redirects to yapengye/NetPlier. The pinned GPLv3 artifact implements keyword inference and clustering evaluation; its core retains TODOs for iteration and format inference. Do not treat this public repository as a complete reproduction of all paper stages. No runtime reproduction was performed.

Sources reviewed

Source review only; experiments were not rerun for this collection. Cite the original authors using the linked paper or BibTeX.

Primary sources

  1. https://www.ndss-symposium.org/ndss-paper/netplier-probabilistic-network-protocol-reverse-engineering-from-message-traces/
  2. https://www.ndss-symposium.org/wp-content/uploads/ndss2021_4A-5_24531_paper.pdf
  3. https://api.crossref.org/works/10.14722/ndss.2021.24531
  4. https://github.com/yapengye/NetPlier/blob/78abbe67606c76fcd9bfec17667c662dce58f567/README.md
  5. https://github.com/yapengye/NetPlier/blob/78abbe67606c76fcd9bfec17667c662dce58f567/netplier/netplier.py
  6. https://github.com/yapengye/NetPlier/blob/78abbe67606c76fcd9bfec17667c662dce58f567/LICENSE