Exploring IEEE 754 Arithmetic
Post
Cancel

# Exploring IEEE 754 Arithmetic

## Foreword

This article will be covering the interesting arithmetic involved in the conversion of a hexadecimal value into an IEEE 754 (Floating-Point) value, in the context of computing. Additionally, this article will present a BASH script I wrote to perform such conversions, as well as provide a look into the overall process of developing and testing this script.

## Introduction

Recently, in my spare time, I have been conducting a lot of extra research into the fascinating world of reverse engineering, particularly on the disassembly and analysis of binary files. While this topic is not entirely foreign to me given my line of work, I decided to learn the intricacies of a different disassembly tool alongside this research, having only been exposed to the ‘standard’ tools such as Ghidra, IDA and GDB thus far.

This tool I am referring to is actually a framework of disassembly tools collectively called radare2, or r2. While on the surface r2 looks daunting, it is actually very well documented and follows a rather intuitive syntax. If you are at all unfamiliar with this tool, I highly recommend reading the official radare2 book, which can be found here.

ATTENTION: Please note that while this article will briefly cover usage of the r2 disassembly tool, I will not be explaining its functions in-depth, nor providing a comprehensive look into the disassembly process. In this article, r2 is merely being used as a means to highlight a problem which formed the basis of my observation. If you would like to learn more about r2 in-depth, please refer to the aforementioned book, or this tutorial to get started.

## Disassembling C Variables

While researching how r2 works, I decided to test its functionality by writing some very basic C programs, compiling them, then disassembling the resulting binary file. This would then allow me to compare the assembly output of r2 to the C source code to better understand how to navigate the disassembler, and perform analysis on more complicated binary structures.

Therefore, one of the first programs I compiled was the following C program, which simply lists a few common variable data-types, such as int (integer), char (character), float (floating-point) and double (higher precision floating-point):

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 #include <stdio.h> int main() { int a = 42; char b = 'M'; float c = 5.5; double d = 3.14; return 0; } 

After compiling this code on my Linux system using gcc, I then opened the binary file using r2 and ran the following commands (output truncated):

1 2 3 4 5 6 [0x00401020]> aaa [ . . . ] [0x00401020]> afl [ . . . ] [0x00401020]> s main [0x00401106]> pdf 

Here, I simply analysed the binary (aaa), listed the functions (afl), jumped to the address containing the main function, and then ran the ‘print disassembled function’ (pdf) command. The resulting output from this command was a low-level look at the C source code, but written in assembly (machine) language. The relevant part of this code has been provided below, wherein I also changed the r2 variable names to make the code slightly more readable:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 push rbp mov rbp, rsp mov dword [int], 0x2a mov byte [char], 0x4d movss xmm0, dword [0x00402010] movss dword [float], xmm0 movsd xmm0, qword [0x00402018] movsd qword [double], xmm0 mov eax, 0 pop rbp ret 

Reviewing assembly code like the sample above can be quite intimidating, however, if you are somewhat familiar with programming languages in general (such as C and its derivatives), this code is actually quite easy to understand. Firstly the value of the base pointer register rbp is pushed onto the stack and then the value of the stack pointer register rsp is stored (copied) into it.

Continuing, the hexadecimal value 0x2a is then stored in the rbp-0x4 register (which I renamed to int, given I know the source code already) and then the value 0x4d is stored in the rbp-0x5 register (renamed to char). These two values can already be cross-referenced with our source code, as converting the them into decimal (base 10) using rax2 gives us the value of our variables:

1 2 3 4 5 [0x00401106]> rax2 0x2a 42 [0x00401106]> rax2 0x4d 77 

Here we can see that our integer variable is correct at 42, as specified in the C program. However, we did not specify an integer for the second variable, but a character. Therefore, if we search an ASCII table for the decimal value 77, we will see that it corresponds to our specified character ‘M’. A handy ASCII table can be displayed within r2 by using the following rax2 command:

1 [0x00401106]> rax2 -a 

The next two variables are a little bit more complicated. You might be tempted to simply convert the hexadecimal values you see in square brackets straight to decimal, just like with the integer variable, however doing so would result in the following:

1 2 [0x00401106]> rax2 0x00402010 4202512 

This is obviously not the correct value, and in fact, the hexadecimal string we converted does not refer to a value in of itself, but instead an address in memory. Your first clue that this may be related to floating-point numbers is the movss command, which moves a single-precision floating-point value from a location in memory to another operand (typically an XMM register). In this case, a value at the memory address 0x00402010 is being stored in the xmm0 register, before being copied to the rbp-0xc (renamed to float) register.

But what is the value in memory being pushed to the xmm0 register? Well we know by looking at the source code that it must be the value 5.5, the question is how do we extrapolate this value using r2? In fact, there are two ways we can ascertain the value being moved into the xmm0 register. The first involves simply looking at a hexadecimal dump of the address being moved into the xmm0 register, as follows:

1 2 3 [0x00401106]> pxw @ 0x00402010 0x00402010 0x40b00000 0x00000000 0x51eb851f 0x40091eb8 ...@.......Q...@ [ . . . ] 

In the output above, we can see the hexadecimal value 0x40b00000, which could be our floating-point value. To check, we can simply run rax2 again using the Fx parameter to specify a floating-point number:

1 2 [0x00401106]> rax2 Fx40b00000 5.500000f 

However, we can further verify that this is the correct value by examining the contents of xmm0 register, which brings us to the second method we can use. In this method, I create a breakpoint in the code where the value of xmm0 is moved into the float variable, then I execute the binary using ood and dc. We should then hit our specified breakpoint, at which point we can query the contents of the xmm0 register:

ATTENTION: It is not recommended to execute a binary using r2 outside of a virtualised environment, especially when you are dealing with unknown binaries or potential malware. In this case, I created the source code for the binary being analysed, so there is no risk of damage to my system. Please exercise caution when executing binaries unless you know what you are doing.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 [0x00401115]> dc hit breakpoint at: 0x40111d [0x0040111d]> dr xmm0 0x00000000000000000000000040b00000 [0x0040111d]> rax2 Fx00000000000000000000000040b00000 5.500000f 

As you can see, we get a 16-byte hexadecimal value which matches the previous value of 0x40b00000 we found. Furthermore, as we already demonstrated earlier with rax2, this hexadecimal string translates into the floating-point number 5.5. However, as I am about to show, the next variable, of the double data-type, is not as easy to handle.

If we repeat the process we used for the float variable, but this time for the double variable; these are the results we end up with:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 [0x00401106]> pxq @ 0x00402018 0x00402018 0x40091eb851eb851f 0x000000343b031b01 ...Q...@...;4... [ . . . ] [0x0040111d]> dc hit breakpoint at: 0x40112a [0x0040112a]> dr xmm0 0x000000000000000040091eb851eb851f [0x0040112a]> rax2 Fx40091eb851eb851f 126443839488.000000f 

This is interesting, it appears that the hexadecimal value 0x40091eb851eb851f is being moved to the xmm0 register after the breakpoint I set. This must be our floating-point value of 3.14 as specified in the source code, however as you can see above, it does not seem like rax2 can translate it. Looking at the manual page for the rax2 command, it seems like the conversion between hexadecimal and floating numbers is only possible with a 32-bit hexadecimal value. However, as you can see in the output above, we have a 64-bit hexadecimal value.

## Observation

The answer to the conversion problem is actually quite simple; it seems that rax2 is only capable of converting a given hexadecimal value into a single precision floating-point value. Since we set the variable d in our initial program as a double data-type, this means that the hexadecimal value needs to be converted into a double precision floating-point value.

Now the question forms; how do we reliably convert a given 64-bit hexadecimal string into a double precision floating-point value? Well, you always have the option of using online converters to do the calculations for you: 1, 2, 3, 4. However, I am going to take a more scientific approach by examining the arithmetic outlined by the IEEE 754 standard, and understanding the mathematics behind how floating-point numbers are calculated by computers.

Additionally, I will also create a BASH script using this arithmetic to take hexadecimal strings as input values, then convert them to floating-point values of an appropriate precision.

## Research

### Measurement Precision

At this point you may be wondering what a floating-point number actually refers to, and from looking at the initialised values in the C source code, you will likely ascertain that they refer to numbers with decimal points. Such values are very important in the world of physics and mathematics as they allow a greater degree of precision in scientific measurements.

For instance, when you measure the distance between two objects in your household, you will likely use a standard tape measure. On this tape measure, you will be typically be able to use inches, feet, centimetres or millimetres. Using the SI units, you will not be able to measure to a greater degree of precision than the milimeter. For example, you may measure 458 mm, but you would not be able to accurately measure a distance of 458.627 mm1.

In ordinary everyday-life, this level of precision will be more than sufficient for most jobs. However, it is important to understand that the level of precision you are working at depends on the Significant Figures of the number. For instance; the numbers we used earlier have three (458) and six (458.627) significant figures respectively. From this we can derive the most significant digit and the least significant digit, which are determined by each digits exponent value; the digit with the largest exponent is the most significant, and the digit with the smallest exponent is the least significant, as you would expect.

To further understand this concept of significant figures and exponents, which play a major factor in floating-point arithmetic, it is very important that you are familiar with Scientific Notation (also known as ‘Standard Form’).

### Scientific Notation

In the world of physics; particularly astronomy and astrophysics, scientists will often find themselves performing calculations with exceptionally large or small numbers. Writing these numbers out normally as they appear would be inefficient and tedious. Therefore, scientific notation is commonly used instead to represent these values. For instance, the mass of a proton (in kilograms - kg), often denoted by $$p$$ or $$p^+$$, written as a real number is as follows2:

$$0.000000000000000000000000001672621923$$

Whereas in scientific notation, this value would be written as:

$$1.672621923 × 10^{-27}$$

You should be able to immediately see how much more convenient it is to write a very small value in this notation. We can easily illustrate this notation by converting it into a formula, as follows:

$$M × 10^n$$

In this formula, $$n$$ is our exponent value, denoted by an integer. The $$M$$ value is known as the significand (also commonly referred to as the coefficient or mantissa)3. Using the scientific notation for the mass of a proton above, we can say that the exponent is -27 and the significand is 1.672621898. However, it is important to note that this value can also be written as the following:

$$16.72621923 × 10^{-28}$$

$$167.2621923 × 10^{-29}$$

Hence, this is why we would say that the leading 1 is the most significant digit because its exponent is -27. It is also important to note for future reference that in scientific notation, the value is typically always normalized. This simply means that there must be one non-zero digit before the decimal point, which can be either positive or negative. In the case of the two additional notations above, they can be considered de-normalized, as they consist of multiple digits before the decimal point. Interestingly, this is why such values are referred to as ‘floating-point’ numbers, as the decimal point seemingly ‘floats’ between the significant digits.

### Rounding Significant Figures

One issue commonly encountered in the realm of significant digits is that of rounding. Since we know that the number of significant digits a value has correlates to its overall precision, this means that data is lost when the value is rounded off. One example is the value for the speed of light in a vacuum, denoted by $$c$$ and measured in metres per second (m/s), is4:

$$2.99792458 × 10^8$$

However, you may see this value being rounded to one significant figure, as shown below:

$$3 × 10^8$$

Although this may seem inconsequential, in actuality this may cause accuracy problems when dealing with very precise calculations. The issue of rounding when dealing with the number of significant digits can also be demonstrated with arithmetic involving decimal numbers:

$$1.8 × 4.49$$

Here we are multiplying a number with two significant digits against a number with three significant digits. A standard calculator would probably tell you that the result of this multiplication would be 8.08, however the actual answer would be rounded to 8.1. This is due to 1.8 only having two significant digits, meaning the answer must also have two significant digits, to account for the difference in precision between the two values. It is important to note that rounding in this way should ONLY be performed at the end of the calculation. If we were to then further multiply the original answer by 1.7 for example, you would multiply this by 8.08 and NOT 8.1. This is done to prevent data loss in the calculation5.

These types of potential precision errors all factor into floating-point arithmetic. This type of arithmetic in the computing world has been known to have problems with precision and the overall speed of calculation. To address these problems, the IEEE 754 standard was created, which prescribes how floating-point values should be represented in binary arithmetic.

### The IEEE 754 Standard

In 1985, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) published a technical standard for binary (base-2) floating-point arithmetic, which became known as IEEE 754-1985. This standard would later be superseded by IEEE 754-2008, which added a further radix format to the original, specifically radix 10 (also known as the base-10 decimal system). This standard would then again be superseded by the more recent IEEE-754-2019. If the IEEE seems familiar to you in the cyber industry, you may recognise them from their well-known IEEE 802, which provide a set of standards for Ethernet and wireless networks.

In its current form, IEEE 754 specifies five different floating-point formats in a ‘basic’ group. These are split into three binary formats, with lengths of 32-bits (single precision), 64-bits (double precision) and 128-bits (quadruple precision). The final two are decimal formats, with lengths of 64-bits and 128-bits6. The three binary formats are represented in the C programming language by the float, double and long double data-types respectively. The standard also defines additional formats, called the ‘extended’ groups, although these are rarely used and will not be the focus of this article.

Before we dive into the storage of floating-point values, it is important to note that the IEEE 754 standard for floating-point arithmetic does more than just provide formats for these values. The standard also specifies operations such as; addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc. In addition to multiple conversions involving floating-point numbers, such as; converting integers and decimal strings to floating-point values. Finally, the standard also covers exceptions, such as dealing with Non-Numbers (NaN).

The representation of floating-point values, as defined by the IEEE 754 standard is as follows:

$$(-1)^{s} × b^e × M$$

I like to think of this as a formula, which can be broken down into the following values:

• $$s$$ : The sign value
• $$b$$ : The base system in use
• $$e$$ : The exponent value
• $$M$$ : The significand (or mantissa) value

The base is simply our radix, which can be either 2, to represent binary, or 10 to represent decimal. In this case, we will be working primarily with a binary radix, hence we can say at this point that: $$b = 2$$ . Additionally, it is worth noting that in the IEEE 754 standard, the number of digits in the significand determines our level of precision, denoted by $$p$$. For example; in single precision values, $$M$$ would consist of 23 bits, with one additional stored as the ‘hidden bit’ (sometimes known as the ‘leading bit’), which will be explained in further detail later7.

Finally, the exponent is broken up into two additional parameters for granularity, these are:

• $$emax$$ : The maximum exponent value
• $$emin$$ : The minimum exponent value

Since we know what base we are working in, we simply need to extract our sign, exponent and significand from the binary string we are working with to complete the conversion. In the disassembly of C variables earlier in the article, we found that the hexadecimal string 0x40b00000 corresponded to the floating-point value 5.5. Using the logic outlined by the IEEE 754 standard, we can take this string as a control variable to hopefully convert it into the correct single precision floating-point value.

### Parameter Breakdown

Now we have our hexadecimal string 0x40b00000, first of all we need to convert this into binary, since we will be working with a base $$b$$ value of 2. This is relatively easy to do manually, however you can use the bc tool on Linux to do this conversion for you. For example, the following command will convert our hexadecimal string to binary on the command-line8:

1 $echo "obase=2; ibase=16; 40B00000" | bc  ATTENTION: Please note that bc will strip leading 0s from the output, so be sure to restore them or use another method of conversion. This hexadecimal value will result in the following binary string: • 0100 0000 1011 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 We have a 32-bit binary value, which can now be broken down into our desired parameters. Since we are dealing with a single precision value; the binary string will be broken down as follows: 1 2 3 BIT NO.: | 31 | 30 23 | 22 0 | BINARY: | 0 | 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 | 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | PARAMETER: | Sign | Exponent | Significand |  Here we can see that 23 bits are allocated for the significand, 8 bits for the exponent and the final bit for our sign. When dealing with double (64-bit) or quadruple (128-bit) precision values, simply refer to the following table to ascertain how many bits in the binary string to assign to each parameter9: SINGLEDOUBLEQUADRUPLE SIGN111 EXPONENT81115 SIGNIFICAND2352112 ### Sign First, we shall take a look at the value of the sign; $$s$$ . In the example above, we can see that our sign simply has the value 0. Therefore, substituting this value into the formula, we will get the following: $$(-1)^{0} × 2^e × M$$ Here, we can calculate $$(-1)^0$$ to be 1, therefore we now know that our resulting floating-point value will be a positive number. The only other value $$s$$ can possibly be is 1, which will result in $$(-1)^1$$ which equals -1. Hence, we can reliably determine that when $$s$$ equals 1, the floating-point value is negative, and when $$s$$ equals 0, it will be positive. Finally, we can say that our formula for the conversion at this stage will now be: $$1 × 2^e × M$$ ### Exponent Now for the exponent value; $$e$$ . In our example, the bits covering this parameter are 10000001, which we can convert into decimal form to get our value for $$e$$ . Again, this is relatively easy to do manually, however we can use the Linux tool bc to perform this conversion for us: 1$ echo "obase=10; ibase=2; 10000001" | bc 

This command will result in a value of 129. Now you may be tempted to push this value straight into the formula, however there is one further variable we need to account for. The exponent in this case is actually biased, meaning before we proceed with further calculations, the biased exponent must be adjusted10.

To understand what a biased exponent actually is, we first need to review how signed (positive or negative) integers are stored. Typically, signed integers will be represented by two’s complement, which enables computers to make calculations using binary values. It follows a simple arithmetic; you have a fixed number of bits used to store the data, the most significant digit is the sign (as discussed earlier), the two’s complement is then calculated by inverting the bits and adding 111.

Two’s complement is very useful for storing negative numbers in binary form. For instance, if a computer wanted to store the decimal value of -10 as two’s complement using 8-bits of data; we would first take the binary representation of decimal 10, which would be 00001010. Then we invert the bits (one’s complement) so the binary value becomes 11110101. Finally, we simply add 1 to the this value, resulting in 11110110, which is the two’s complement for the decimal value -10.

It is very helpful to note that in 8-bit binary values using two’s complement, the largest possible value is not 255, which you would normally expect from 11111111, but it is instead 127, represented by 01111111. This is because the first bit is the sign, telling us whether the value is positive or negative. Similarly, this means that the smallest possible value is -127, resulting from 11111111 where we take the first bit as the sign12.

Therefore, we can extrapolate that given an 8-bit exponent, the $$emax$$ would be 127 and $$emin$$ would be -126. If you are wondering why the $$emin$$ value is not -127, it is simply because the IEEE standard specifies that $$emin$$ shall be $$1-emax$$ for all formats. Meaning 1-127 results in $$emin$$ being -126.

Since the unsigned binary exponent in our floating-point calculation is not stored as two’s complement, we need to account for the bias (or offset). This is a very simple calculation, where the bias is denoted by $$k$$ and uses this formula13:

$$k = 2^{n-1}-1$$

Where $$n$$ in this case is the number of bits in our biased exponent. Substituting in the value of $$n$$ from our previous example; 8, this gives us the following results:

$$k = 2^{8-1}-1$$

This results in 127, which we already know is the $$emax$$ value for 8-bit exponents. Therefore, to adjust for the bias, we simply subtract this value from our original calculation for $$e$$; 129 - 127 and we find that our adjusted exponent $$e$$ , is 2. With the exponent properly adjusted, we can now add this value to our formula, as follows:

$$1 × 2^2 × M$$

Interestingly, since we already know the number $$n$$ of bits in the exponent $$e$$ between single, double and quadruple precision values, we can pre-calculate their bias by using the formula for $$k$$ above:

SINGLEDOUBLEQUADRUPLE
EXPONENT BITS81115
BIAS FORMULA$$2^{8-1}-1$$$$2^{11-1}-1$$$$2^{15-1}-1$$
BIAS VALUE ($$emax$$)127102316383
BIAS VALUE ($$emin$$)-126-1022-16382

Now that we have interpreted the $$s$$ (sign) and the $$e$$ (exponent) values, it is time to move onto the final piece of the puzzle; the $$M$$ (significand).

### Significand (Mantissa)

Put simply; the significand is the part of the floating-point value which contains its significant digits. You may recall that the number of significant digits in the significand correlates to the level of precision we are working with. In our example floating-point conversion, we are dealing with a 32-bit single precision value, which gives us a 23-bit signficand. The binary value for $$M$$ in our calculation was found to be:

• 01100000000000000000000

The next step is to convert this value into a floating-point significand to then be substituted into our formula. To do this, we need to account for the ‘hidden bit’ we mentioned earlier. When dealing with normal numbers, there is a leading 1 which is added to the significand, which is implied under normal circumstances. The reason this 1 is added is due to the way the normalization process works, as we mentioned before when discussing scientific notation; the most significant digit cannot be zero. Thus, since we are working with a binary value, if the value cannot be 0, it must instead be 114.

Therefore, if we add our implied bit to our example significand, we get the following value:

• 1.01100000000000000000000

It is worth noting at this stage, that we can omit the trailing zeros from the significand, leaving us with 1.011. Substituting this value into our formula (and re-arranging it a bit), we will form the following:

$$1.011 × 2^2$$

Note how we have also omitted the sign value as it simply determines whether our resulting value is positive or negative, and we already know this value will be positive. The above may look familiar to a value in scientific notation, meaning we can extrapolate the full value by expanding the formula to give us the following:

• 101.1

Now it is a simple case of converting this value to its final decimal equivalent. Again, the mathematics behind this is very simple; we simply perform $$2^x$$ where $$x$$ is a set bit value. The following illustrates this in action:

1 2 BIT VALUE: | 2 | 1 | 0 | . | -1 | BINARY: | 1 | 0 | 1 | . | 1 | 

As you can see, only the bit values 2, 0 and -1 are set. Hence the final calculation we perform is the following:

$$2^2 + 2^0 + 2^{-1} = 4 + 1 + 0.5$$

This results in our floating-point value of 5.5, which is correct to what we set in the original C program. However, this is not the end of the discussion about the significand, as we have certain exceptions to deal with, such as ‘subnormal’ values.

### Subnormal Values

As we laid out in the significand, the ‘hidden bit’ is added to the mantissa when we are dealing with normal numbers. In this case, a normal number is defined as any value where the exponent $$e$$ is greater than -126, but less than 128:

$$-126<e<128$$

However, what happens when our biased exponent is 0? Such an event occurs when all the bits in the exponent are 0, meaning when we adjust for the bias, the resulting value for $$e$$ will be -127, which falls outside of our defined $$emin$$ number for single precision values15. According to the IEEE 754 standard, when $$e=0$$ and $$M \ne 0$$ , then the value is ‘subnormal’ and needs a slightly different calculation. In such instances, the formula we would use is as follows:

$$(-1)^{s} × 2^{emin} × M$$

Essentially, the ‘hidden bit’ becomes 0 when dealing with subnormal values. For instance, the hexadecimal value 0x007fffff, when converted into a single precision floating-point value, represents the largest subnormal number possible for this precision level. Breaking this hexadecimal string down into binary format to extract the sign, exponent and significand illustrates this:

1 2 3 BIT NO.: | 31 | 30 23 | 22 0 | BINARY: | 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 | PARAMETER: | Sign | Exponent | Significand | 

As you can see; the sign is 0 so we know the final value will be positive. The biased exponent is 0, so adjusting this, we get -127 for our exponent, telling us that the number is subnormal. The significand is then prepended with a 0 since the value is subnormal, which then gives us the following:

• 0.11111111111111111111111

Converting this value into decimal is actually very simple given the fact that every bit is 1. Since we know there are twenty-three bits in the fractional part of the significand, we can simply perform the following calculation to figure out the value of $$M$$:

$$1 - 2^{-23}$$

In this case, this is the same as performing $$2^{-1} + 2^{-2}+ … +2^{-23}$$ and results in the value 0.99999988079071. Now we simply substitute in our values into the equation for subnormal numbers:

$$(-1)^{0} × 2^{-126} × 0.99999988079071$$

Rearranging this slightly and we end up with:

$$0.99999988079071 × 2^{-126}$$

Note that in this equation, our exponent value is $$emin$$ . This results in the largest possible subnormal value of $$1.17549421069244 × 10^{-38}$$ , which is still a very small number regardless. For reference; the hexadecimal string 0x00000001 will result in the smallest possible subnormal single precision floating-point value.

Now we have learned how to appropriately deal with subnormal values, there are a few other exceptions that you will need to be aware of when converting hexadecimal strings into floating-point numbers.

### Signed Zero

While testing out IEEE 754 floating-point conversions, you may attempt to calculate the floating-point value of a hexadecimal string consisting of all zeroes, such as 0x00000000. This is interesting, because you may be able to look at this and immediately realise that the resulting floating-point value must also be 0. However, how can you ascertain whether it is positive or negative?

Ordinarily, the number 0 does not have a sign, but when dealing with IEEE 754 floating point values, this is not the case, and we can obtain the result of a signed zero. In terms of the floating-point arithmetic we have laid out thus far, a signed zero will occur when the exponent $$e$$ and significand $$M$$ values are all zeroes. The only difference between a positive and negative zero is dependant on the value of the sign $$s$$.

Therefore, we can say that there are two further special exceptions in the floating-point arithmetic which occur when $$e$$ and $$M$$ are all zeroes. A positive zero can be obtained by converting the hexadecimal string 0x00000000 into a single precision floating-point value, and a negative zero can be obtained from the hexadecimal string 0x80000000. The reason this particular string results in a negative zero is very easy to notice when written in binary format:

• 1000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000

As you can see, the sign $$s$$ value is 1, which immediately informs us that the resulting value will be negative, as per $$(-1)^1$$ . Since the rest of the binary value are zeroes, we can simply say that the resulting floating-point number is -016.

### Signed Infinity

Another special quantity which can arise from IEEE 754 floating-point calculations is either positive or negative infinity. Looking through the logic we have demonstrated so far, you may have noticed that we ended up with a subnormal value when the adjusted exponent $$e$$ was -126. However, what happens when the value of $$e$$ is on the other end of the spectrum at 128?

This event occurs when all of the bits in the exponent are 1, meaning when we calculate the biased exponent, it will be 255 (for single precision numbers). Adjusting this value to account for the bias, we end up with 128 as the value for $$e$$ , which falls outside of our defined range for normal and subnormal numbers17.

It should be noted in this case that the term ‘inifinity’ is used to refer to floating-point values which would otherwise cause an overflow. In the context of binary floating-point computation; an ‘overflow’ pertains to the problems computers will encounter when representing very large numbers. Similarly, the term ‘underflow’ is used to describe the issue of computers representing very small numbers.

Therefore, the IEEE 754 standard accounts for this and specifies that when the value of $$e$$ is $$emax + 1$$ and the significand $$M$$ is all 0, then the result will be INF (infinity). As seen before with signed zero, the infinity result can also be either positive or negative, depending on the value of the sign $$s$$ bit.

According to these rules, in terms of single precision floating-point values; the hexadecimal string 0x7f80000 will result in positive infinity (+INF), while the hexadecimal string 0xff800000 will result in negative infinity (-INF).

### NaN (Non-Numbers)

The final special quantity which can arise from IEEE 754 floating-point calculations is NaN, or Not-a-Number (commonly referred to as Non-Numbers). NaNs occur in floating-point values when the exponent $$e$$ is $$emax +1$$ , similar to the aforementioned signed infinity values. However, this time the difference being that the significand $$M$$ is non-zero18.

A non-number simply refers to an invalid computational mathematical operation, the most famous example being the division of any number by 0. Another example is attempting to perform the square root of a negative number. In the case of floating-point values, the non-zero significand separates NaNs from signed infinity and becomes an impossible mathematical operation because you cannot use infinity in arithmetic.

Thus, the IEEE 754 standard specifies that in cases where the exponent $$e$$ value is $$emax + 1$$ and the value of the significant $$M$$ is non-zero; the resulting floating-point number will be considered NaN.

Interestingly, it is worth noting that unlike the signed zero and signed infinity exceptions, the sign $$s$$ bit in the computation of Non-Numbers makes no difference. In other words; there is no distinction between positive NaN or negative NaN. Therefore, we can say, for example; the hexadecimal string 0xffc00001 will result in a NaN. This is much easier to ascertain by examining this string in binary form:

• 1 11111111 10000000000000000000001

### Addressing the Observation

My original observation formed the basis for the aforementioned research into how binary floating-point numbers are interpreted by computers using the IEEE 754 standard. In my case, I wanted to understand how the hexadecimal value 0x40091eb851eb851f, stored in the xmm0 register, converts into the floating-point number 3.14, as written in the C source code.

Although much of my research focused on single precision values, the logic is very easy to adjust for double precision values. In this case, since the hexadecimal string 0x40091eb851eb851f is 64-bits long, it will result in a double precision floating point number. Firstly, I will convert this string into binary to then extract the sign, exponent and significand:

• 0100000000001001000111101011100001010001111010111000010100011111

In the case of double precision values, the exponent $$e$$ consists of 11 bits (with a bias of 1023) and the significand $$M$$ consists of 52 bits, as follows:

1 2 3 4 SIGN: 0 (Number is positive) BIASED EXPONENT: 10000000000 (Decimal: 1024) ADJUSTED EXPONENT: 1024 - 1023 = 1 MANTISSA: 1001000111101011100001010001111010111000010100011111 

By breaking down the binary into these parts, we can quickly ascertain whether we are dealing with a subnormal or other special quantity. In this case, we have a normal number, so no exceptional calculations need to factor into our conversion. If you will recall, the formula for the conversion that we will use for normal numbers is as follows:

$$(-1)^{s} × 2^{e-bias} × M$$

We already know $$s$$ is 0 so the result will be positive. The adjusted biased exponent $$e$$ is 1 and the significand $$M$$ will be 1.1001000111101011100001010001111010111000010100011111. To adjust the singificand, we use the arithmetic we outlined earlier, which will give us a final $$M$$ value of:

• 1.57000000000000006217

Now we can substitute these values into the formula, providing us with our final calculation in scientific notation, as follows:

$$1.57000000000000006217 × 2^{1}$$

Which results in our double precision floating-point value of 3.14. Therefore, I have been able to successfully apply the arithmetic outlined in the IEEE 754 standard to convert a 64-bit hexadecimal value into a floating-point number, which I was previously unable to do within the disassembly tool.

The next step I decided to take was to create a shell script, written entirely using BASH logic, and no reliance on external tools, with the goal of converting hexadecimal strings to floating-point values straight from the Linux command-line. After carefully reviewing my research up to this point, I was confident I could write a functioning BASH script, so I formulated a hypothesis.

## Hypothesis

I will admit that BASH is a very limiting ‘language’ to script in, and although I would prefer to use something like C, I could see that such conversion programs had already been written, whereas I could not find any examples of BASH scripts which handled floating-point conversions. Normally, I would be under the assumption that if someone has not done it before me, then it is likely impossible, or rather, impractical to do so.

Nevertheless, my research supports the idea that such conversions are possible using BASH, therefore, I posed my hypothesis; It is possible to reliably convert hexadecimal strings to precision-appropriate floating-point values using BASH script. The next step, as with all (good) hypotheses, was to perform testing and experimentation to either prove or disprove my hypothesis.

## Experimentation / Testing

### Environment

Development and testing of this shell script was performed solely on a Linux machine running the Fedora 32 distribution. It is also important to note that, due to having to factor rounding into certain BASH calculations, I was running BASH version 5.0.17. Finally, this machine uses an Intel-based processor, which is also significant as different processors, such as ARM, may use different levels of precision in floating-point calculations.

### Conversions

When I write a shell script, or any program, I typically write small portions of the code, verify that code is working as intended, and then expand upon it as needed. In this case, I knew that I would need to convert the hexadecimal input string to binary to perform the floating-point calculations, so I decided to add simple binary conversion functionality to the script at the same time.

I wanted to avoid using external Linux tools like bc to do the arithmetic, so I decided to simply map each possible hexadecimal character to its corresponding binary value in a case statement, which worked perfectly. This method would also eliminate the issue of leading zeroes being removed from the output, which is a problem with tools like bc.

Just because I could, and to make the script a bit more useful, I also added conversions from hexadecimal to ASCII and decimal formats. Again, this was very straightforward to do with BASH logic. For conversion into ASCII, I simply used a one-line for loop, as follows:

1 for char in $(echo "$hex_string" | sed "s/$$..$$/\1 /g" | tr -d '\x00'); do printf echo "\x$char";done  This loop iterates through each hexadecimal character, and uses printf to display the character in ASCII format. It should be noted that during testing I had issues with NULL bytes, so I ended up having to use tr to trim them from the input. It was at this point I also implemented rigorous user input sanitisation for all functions, to prevent incorrect strings from being treated as hexadecimal. Conversion from hexadecimal (base-16) into decimal (base-10) was even easier using the following one-liner: 1 echo -n "$hex_string" | sed 's|0x||g' | sed 's| ||g' | sed 's|^|0x|' | xargs printf "%f\n" | sed 's|\..*||g' 

As with the ASCII conversion, this simply uses printf in conjunction with xargs to display the hexadecimal input string in decimal format.

### Floating-Point Functions

Writing the functions covering the extraction of the sign, biased exponent and significand from the hexadecimal input string were a bit more challenging. Firstly, I would convert the input into binary and then use an if statement to check how long the input string was. I decided to write functions covering conversions from an input value of 16-bits (Half precision), 32-bits (single precision), 64-bits (double precision) and 128-bits (quadruple precision).

Starting with single precision values, I used awk to separate the binary string into the sign, exponent and significand. I then wrote a variable to adjust the decimal exponent value based on the bias for the precision level I was working at (e.g. 127 for single precision). Dealing with the significand took a little more tweaking, since there is no method (that I know of) in BASH to convert a binary string with a decimal point into a base-10 number.

Therefore, I came up with the idea to initialise the mantissa as an array and then iterate through each bit, mapped to another numbered array, using a for loop and an awk calculation to perform $$2^x$$ where $$x$$ is every bit equal to 1. This sounds more complicated than it actually is, but then all I had to do from here was add the resulting values together and I get my decimal value for $$M$$ .

Substituting these values into the formula for floating-point calculations was simple using a command in gawk. For instance, the gawk command I used for the final calculation for double precision normal floating-point numbers was as follows:

1 gawk -M -v ROUNDMODE="Z" '{print (-1)**'$sign'*2**('$biased_exponent'-1023)*(1+'$significand')}'  Here, you can see that I adjust the biased exponent by subtracting 1023 from the value, as per the double precision value in this case. Since this is a normal number, 1 is added to the significand to account for the ‘hidden bit’. You will note that I had to use gawk so I could take advantage of the -M parameter, which performs all integer arithmetic using GMP arbitrary-precision integers. The ROUNDMODE variable passed to gawk changes the rounding mode to use for arbitrary precision arithmetic on numbers. When it came to dealing with subnormal numbers, I used an if statement to check the $$e$$ and $$M$$ values to ensure they matched the criteria for subnormals. Then I could substitute the values into the following calculation (double precision in this case): 1 gawk -M -v ROUNDMODE="Z" '{print (-1)**'$sign'*2**(-1022)*'$significand'}'  The difference here is that there is no need to specify the exponent as a variable. For subnormals, the value of $$e$$ will be equal to $$emin$$, which in this case would always be -1022 for double precision floating-point values. Finally, the only other difference is that the significand is left as is, with the ‘hidden bit’ at 0. The last issues I had to account for were the exceptions for the special quantities; signed zero, signed infinity and NaN. Again, this was very easy to implement as multiple if statements to check (and compare) the values of the sign, exponent and significand to understand how to treat the output value. For instance, should the value of $$e$$ be 0, $$M$$ be non-zero and $$s$$ be 1 then the result would be negative zero. Unfortunately, one of the issues I ran into when testing this script early on was with the rounding of very small numbers. For instance, when I supplied a hexadecimal input string such as 0x00800000, which would normally convert into the smallest possible normal number of $$1.1754943508 × 10^{−38}$$ , it would instead output 0.0000000000000000000000000000. I eventually realised that this was an issue with the rounding which I could not accurately account for. Hence why I had to use gawk as outlined earlier. ## Data Analysis Once the bulk of the BASH script functionality was written and tested, I could start analysing the results. For my control variables, I took the hexadecimal input values which covered each of the following: • Normal Numbers • Subnormal Numbers • Signed Zero • Signed Infinity • Non-Numbers (NaN) I then fed these input values into each of the four functions I had created for IEEE 754 binary floating-point conversions; half, single, double and quadruple precision. Each one I tested yielded the correct floating-point value with no obvious errors in my experimentation. With this said, I decided that the final test would be my original floating-point C program variables I specified at the beginning of this article. As a reminder; in this program I used a single precision value of 5.5, and a double precision value of 3.14. When I disassembled this program using r2, I found that the hexadecimal value of the single precision floating-point number was 0x40b00000. Using my script, which I named HexConv (very original I know), with the -fs parameter, resulted in the following: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7$ ./hexconv -fs 40b00000 SIGN (S): 0 EXPONENT (E): 10000001 (Dec. 129) MANTISSA (M): 01100000000000000000000 EXPONENT BIAS ADJUST: 2 SINGLE-PRECISION FLOATING NUMBER: 5.5000000000000000000000000000 

As you can see, the converted floating-point value was 5.5, with a few trailing zeros, which is a symptom of the rounding problem I had to circumvent. Lastly, I also tested the double precision value, whose hexadecimal string was found in r2 to be 0x40091eb851eb851f. Again, my HexConv script yielded the following results:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 \$ ./hexconv -fd 40091eb851eb851f SIGN (S): 0 EXPONENT (E): 10000000000 (Dec. 1024) MANTISSA (M): 1001000111101011100001010001111010111000010100011111 EXPONENT BIAS ADJUST: 1 DOUBLE-PRECISION FLOATING NUMBER: 3.1399999879323230445038461766671389341354370117187500 

You may be wondering why the resulting floating-point value is not exactly 3.14, well this is again due to the fact I specify a much higher level of precision in my script calculations to account for the rounding problems. However, this value is still functionally 3.14.

## Concluding Statements

Satisfied with the results that my HexConv script were producing, I published the script on my GitHub page, and the script itself can be found here. As I stated previously, I am aware that converting hexadecimal strings to IEEE 754 floating-point values using BASH may not be the most efficient nor the most practical method of doing so. However, I figured that scripting the arithmetic outlined in my research using BASH would give me a much greater understanding of the fascinating mathematics involved in these conversions. Additionally, since I could not find any working examples of shell scripts which performed IEEE 754 conversions, I figured it would also be a decent test of my BASH knowledge, since I had nothing to compare it to.

Interestingly, this topic of research was sparked by my interest in learning more about the r2 disassembly framework. On this topic, I will say that I am very much enjoying using r2 as I find its syntax very easy to understand and is a fantastic tool for someone like me, who likes to work primarily on the command-line. Although this article was not an in-depth look into r2 or reverse engineering in general, once I have experimented more with disassembly using r2, I will likely publish any interesting findings here, which will be more technical than mathematical.

Finally, I would like to conclude this article by stating that; understanding the arithmetic behind how computers interpret strings as floating-point values can be exceptionally useful for people working in the cyber industry. I know from experience that a lot of my junior colleagues would be resistant to learning assembly or computational mathematics. I understand that these can be daunting or even boring subjects, but I always find that those who frequently ask “why?”, will invariably become better analysts.

Indeed, as with everything in science and especially in cyber, you should always strive to understand why something works. In the context of this article, that ‘something’ for me was the IEEE 754 arithmetic, and as mathematics is the language of science, I was captivated to take the time to learn how it worked.

If you have any recommendations or questions about the topics mentioned in this article, you can contact me on Twitter.

– Mairi

## References

1. LibreTexts. (2021). Significant Figures - Writing Numbers to Reflect Precision [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

2. CODATA. (2018). CODATA Value: proton mass [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

3. Harries, I. (2004). Floating Point Numbers [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

4. CODATA. (2018). CODATA Value: speed of light in vacuum [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

5. Lower, S. (2021). Significant Figures and Rounding [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

6. IEEE. (2019). IEEE 754-2019 - IEEE Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

7. Goldberg, D. (1991). What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

8. StackOverflow. (2012). Hex to Binary conversion in bash [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

9. Finley, T. (2000). Floating Point [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

10. Irvine, R. K. (2000). Tutorial: Floating-Point Binary [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

11. Finley, T. (2000). Two’s Complement [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

12. Chadwick, R. (2021). Binary Negative Numbers! [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

13. Koretskyi, M. (2016). The mechanics behind exponent bias in floating point [Accessed: 2021-05-08]

14. Oracle. (2000). IEEE Arithmetic [Accessed: 2021-05-09]

15. IBM. (2019). Subnormal numbers and underflow [Accessed: 2021-05-09]

16. Stan Development Project. (2019). Floating-point representations [Accessed: 2021-05-09]

17. Harries, I. (2003). Infinity and NaNs [Accessed: 2021-05-09]

18. Lawlor, O. (2011). Weird Floating-Point Numbers: Infinity, Denormal, and NaN [Accessed: 2021-05-09]

This post is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by the author.