A first step towards algorithm plagiarism detection

Abstract

In this work, we address the problem of algorithm plagiarism, which occurs when a plagiarist, violating intellectual property rights, steals others' algorithms and covertly implements them. In contrast to software plagiarism, which has been extensively studied, limited attention has been paid to algorithm plagiarism. In this paper, we propose two dynamic value-based approaches, namely N-version and annotation, for algorithm plagiarism detection. Our approaches are motivated by the observation that there exist some critical runtime values which are irreplaceable and uneliminatable for all implementations of the same algorithm. The Nversion approach extracts such values by filtering out noncore values. The annotation approach leverages auxiliary information to flag important variables which contain core values. We also propose a value dependence graph based similarity metric in addition to the longest common subsequence based one, in order to address the potential value reordering attack. We have implemented a prototype and evaluated the proposed schemes on various algorithms. The results show that our approaches to algorithm plagiarism detection are practical, effective and resilient to many automatic obfuscation techniques.

A comparison of code similarity analysers

“…Moreover, it can also capture dynamic behaviours of the programs by executing the compiled code. In the last few years, there have been several studies to discover cloned and plagiarised programs (especially mobile applications) based on compiled code (Chae et al 2013;Chen et al 2014;Gibler et al 2013;Crussell et al 2012Crussell et al , 2013Tian et al 2014;Tamada et al 2004;Myles and Collberg 2004;Hi et al 2009;Zhang et al 2012Zhang et al , 2014McMillan et al 2012;Luo et al 2014).…”

“…Two programs can be similar at the level of purpose, algorithm, or implementation (Zhang et al 2012). Most software plagiarism tools and techniques focus on the level of implementation since it is most likely to be plagiarised.…”

Program Logic Based Software Plagiarism Detection

“…Dynamic birthmark based software plagiarism detection: Jhi et al [5], [13] proposed to use core values as birthmark to detect software plagiarism. This approach has no theoretical guarantee, since core value is hard to define.…”

“…The existing approaches to software plagiarism detection can be divided into the following categories: (C1) static source code comparison methods [6], [7], [8]; (C2) static executable code comparison methods [9]; (C3) dynamic control flow based methods [10]; (C4) dynamic API based methods [11], [12]; (C5) dynamic value based approach [5], [13]. First, C1 does not meet R1 because it has to access source code.…”

Deviation-Based Obfuscation-Resilient Program Equivalence Checking With Application to Software Plagiarism Detection

“…The existing approaches to software plagiarism detection can be divided into the following categories: (C1) static source code comparison methods [6]- [8]; (C2) static executable code comparison methods [9]; (C3) dynamic control flow-based methods [10]; (C4) dynamic API-based methods [11], [12]; (C5) dynamic value-based approach [5], [13]. First, C1 does not meet R1 because it has to access source code.…”