KeySplitWatermark: Zero Watermarking Algorithm for Software Protection Against Cyber-Attacks

Abstract

Cyber-attacks are evolving at a disturbing rate. Data breaches, ransomware attacks, cryptojacking, malware and phishing attacks are now rampant. In this era of cyber warfare, the software industry is also growing with an increasing number of software being used in all domains of life. This evolution has added to the problems of software vendors and users where they have to prevent a wide range of attacks. Existing watermark detection solutions have a low detection rate in the software. In order to address this issue, this paper proposes a novel blind Zero code based Watermark detection approach named KeySplitWatermark, for the protection of software against cyber-attacks. The algorithm adds watermark logically into the code utilizing the inherent properties of code and gives a robust solution. The embedding algorithm uses keywords to make segments of the code to produce a key-dependent on the watermark. The extraction algorithms use this key to remove watermark and detect tampering. When tampering increases to a certain user-defined threshold, the original software code is restored making it resilient against attacks. KeySplitWatermark is evaluated on tampering attacks on three unique samples with two distinct watermarks. The outcomes show that the proposed approach reports promising results against cyber-attacks that are powerful and viable. We compared the performance of our proposal with state-of-the-art works using two different software codes. Our results depict that KeySplitWatermark correctly detects watermarks, resulting in up to 15.95 and 17.43 percent reduction in execution time on given code samples with no increase in program size and independent of watermark size.

SDN based Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems using Manufacturer Usage Description: A Survey

“…Watermarking is a technique used for software protection from the cyber-attacks [153]. As the algorithms use keywords within the code to produce a key.…”

A Minimum Defense Cost Calculation Method for Attack Defense Trees

“…(3) NewChildren � {}; (4) i: � 1; (5) repeat (6) child: � i-th node in Children; (7) if child is an intermediate attack node and (8) has defensive child nodes (9) then (10) T1: � new attack node; (11) Child node relationship of T1: � Child (12) node relationship of child; (13) T1's children: � child's children; (14) T2: � new attack node; (15) T2 children's operator: � AND; (16) Add child to T2's children set; (17) Add T1 to T2's children set; (18) call conversToA2DTree (T1); (19) Add T2 to Newchildren; (20) else (21) call ConverseToA2DTree (child); (22) Add child to Newchildren; (23) end if (24) i: � i+1; (25) customer's online banking credentials, including the username (certificate number) and password. Although usernames can be easily retrieved, obtaining the password requires a phishing e-mail or keylogger.…”

“…Hence, the CPS is currently a research area of increased interest in industry and academia [3]. However, since information technologies are deeply used and the communications between various components are mainly achieved through a network, CPSs are vulnerable to cyberattacks [4][5][6]. Furthermore, due to the high coupling between physical and network components in CPSs, cyberattacks can trigger physical component failures that have severe consequences, such as environmental pollution, property losses, and even casualties [7,8].…”

A Client Bootstrapping Protocol for DoS Attack Mitigation on Entry Point Services in the Cloud

“…Many of these proposals have common mechanisms, for example, randomizing the IP addresses, client authentication and registration, and techniques to shuffle clients. Techniques such as code watermarking [17] (inspired by [18]) can also be used for building deceptive systems that distract attackers from the target.…”