Strings sidebar Refs column is empty for all strings on certain binaries

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#8,504 opened on Sep 1, 2026 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty: 3/5
Estimated time: 1-2 days
Newbie friendliness: 58/100

Issue type: Bug
Clarity: Mostly clear
Activity status: Active
Tech stack: cpp
Domain: reverse-engineering

Research direction

Start by opening the linked helloworld.exe binary on Windows 11 and inspecting the Strings sidebar, focusing on the Refs column for strings such as "Hello, world!" and the format strings. Trace how the sidebar obtains reference counts for these strings and compare it with a binary where the column works; done means applicable references are displayed.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Version and Platform (required):

Binary Ninja Version: 6.1.10562-dev
OS: Windows 11
OS Version: 10.0.26200 N/A Build 26200
CPU Architecture: x64

Bug Description:
On certain binaries, the "Refs" column in the Strings sidebar is empty for all strings, even for strings such as "Hello, world!", "argc: %d", and "argv[%d]: %s" that are clearly referenced by code in the binary. The Refs column should show a reference count for these strings.

Steps To Reproduce:

Open the affected binary in Binary Ninja
Open the Strings sidebar
Observe that the "Refs" column is empty for all listed strings

Expected Behavior:
The "Refs" column in the Strings sidebar should display the number of references for each string, where applicable.

Screenshots/Video Recording:

Binary:
helloworld.exe

Dominant language: C++
Stars: 1.3k
Forks: 298
Avg merge: 4d 13h
Merged PRs (30d): 20

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