Software Watermarking Through Register Allocation: Implementation, Analysis, and Attacks

Abstract. This paper presents an implementation of the novel watermarking method proposed by Venkatesan, Vazirani, and Sinha in their recent paper A Graph Theoretic Approach to Software Watermarking. An executable program is marked by the addition of code for which the topology of the control-flow graph encodes a watermark. We discuss issues that were identified during construction of an actual implementation that operates on Java bytecode. We measure the size and time overhead of watermarking, and evaluate the algorithm against a variety of attacks.

show abstract

“…Qu and Potkonjak [17,14] encode a watermark in a program's register allocation. Like all algorithms based on renaming, this is very fragile.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Graph Theoretic Software Watermarks: Implementation, Analysis, and Attacks

et al. 2004

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Watermarking is a technique that embeds a secret message into the program to discourage IP theft by enabling the establishment of IP ownership [5,12]. Tamper-proofing technique protects software from being tampered by making the software with any unauthorized modification into a nonfunctional code.…”

Section: Software Watermarking and Obfuscatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft IP Protection: Watermarking HDL Codes

Lin

Pari

2004

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Intellectual property (IP) reuse based design is one of the most promising techniques to close the so-called design productivity gap. To facilitate better IP reuse, it is desirable to have IPs exchanged in the soft form such as hardware description language (HDL) source codes. However, soft IPs have higher protection requirements than hard IPs and most existing IP protection techniques are not applicable to soft IPs. In this paper, we describe the basic requirements, make the necessary assumptions, and propose several practical schemes for HDL code protection. We protect the HDL codes by hiding author's signature also called as watermarking, similar to the idea for hard IP and multimedia data protection. But the new challenge is how to embed watermark into HDL source codes, which must be properly documented and synthesizable for reuse. We leverage the unique feature of Verilog HDL design to develop several watermarking techniques. These techniques can protect both new and existing Verilog designs. We watermark SCU-RTL & ISCAS benchmark Verilog circuits, as well as a MP3 decoder. Both original and watermarked designs are implemented on ASICs & FPGAs. The results show that the proposed techniques survive the commercial synthesis tools and cause little design overhead in terms of area/resources, delay and power.

show abstract

“…Obfuscation [2,3] is a major example and it attempts to thwart reverse engineering by making it hard to understand the behavior of a program. Also, software watermark and fingerprint [4,5] allow tracking of misused program copies by providing an additional deterrent to tampering. However, it may be effective for the cases that decompilation of binary code produces some high level of human recognition such as Java.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tamper Resistant Software by Integrity-Based Encryption

Lee

Kim

Yoon

2004

Parallel and Distributed Computing: Applications and Technologies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. There are many situations in which it is desirable to protect a piece of software from illegitimate tampering once it gets distributed to the users. Protecting the software code means some level of assurance that the program will execute as expected even if it encounters the illegitimated modifications. We provide the method of protecting software from unauthorized modification. One important technique is an integrity-based encryption, by which a program, while running, checks itself to verify that it has not been modified and conceals some privacy sensitive parts of program.

show abstract

Software Watermarking Through Register Allocation: Implementation, Analysis, and Attacks

Cited by 39 publications

References 15 publications

Graph Theoretic Software Watermarks: Implementation, Analysis, and Attacks

Graph Theoretic Software Watermarks: Implementation, Analysis, and Attacks

Soft IP Protection: Watermarking HDL Codes

Tamper Resistant Software by Integrity-Based Encryption

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About