XRefer Backend Expansion Updated Proposal Raj Mehta GSOC2026

XRefer is a binary analysis tool built by Mandiant FLARE that uses cross-reference correlation, capa integration, and LLM-powered cluster analysis to help malware analysts navigate complex binaries faster. Today it requires IDA Pro, Binary Ninja, or a configured Ghidra environment to run, locking out students and researchers who lack commercial licenses or heavyweight setups. This project implements a fully functional Radare2 backend for XRefer via the r2pipe Python bindings, paired with a standalone CLI that auto-detects the best available disassembler and falls back to Radare2 when none are found. Radare2 is free, open-source, cross-platform, and pip-installable, making it the right foundation for democratizing XRefer access. The backend maps every method of the BackEnd abstract base class to verified r2pipe commands, handles known r2 edge cases including the aflj NaN-value bug and pdfj integer overflow, and includes targeted refinements to the base abstraction layer. Deliverables are: a complete Radare2 backend module passing integration tests against the Ghidra backend on a three-binary reference corpus; a standalone CLI installable with pip; a test suite with pre-recorded JSON fixtures enabling CI without a live r2 installation; and full documentation covering setup, architecture, and guidance for adding future backends.