A control flow obfuscation method to discourage malicious tampering of software codes

Yu-Lun Huang*, F. S. Ho, H. Y. Tsai, H. M. Kao

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

The paper presents a control flow obfuscation method to discourage reverse engineering and malicious tampering of software codes. Given the original source codes and desired obfuscation criteria, the proposed method works by decomposing the source codes into fragments and then applying various transforms to the code fragments. As the output of our method, the transformed fragments are re-assembled and obfuscated with the designated obfuscation criteria. Moreover, since only control flows are obfuscated with a sequence of transformations that produce equivalent results of the original fragments, the final output can still preserve the same execution results as the original codes. The proposed method can be combined with other security technologies like watermarking or fingerprinting and thus help discouraging software piracy by making watermarked information embedded in software codes difficult to be reverse engineered or tampered.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2006 ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security, ASIACCS '06
Number of pages1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Dec 2006
Event2006 ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security, ASIACCS '06 - Taipei, Taiwan
Duration: 21 Mar 200724 Mar 2007

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 2006 ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security, ASIACCS '06
Volume2006

Conference

Conference2006 ACM Symposium on Information, Computer and Communications Security, ASIACCS '06
Country/TerritoryTaiwan
CityTaipei
Period21/03/0724/03/07

Keywords

  • Control flow obfuscation
  • Intellectual property protection
  • Reverse engineering
  • Software obfuscation
  • Tamper-resistance

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