P. Cousot & R. Cousot, An Abstract Interpretation-Based Framework for Software Watermarking

Patrick Cousot and Radhia Cousot.
An Abstract Interpretation-Based Framework for Software Watermarking.
In Conference Record of the 31st ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Venice, Italy, January 14-16, 2004. ACM Press, New York, U.S.A. pp. 173—185.
Paper: PDF (262.6 KB)
Abstract: Software watermarking consists in the intentional embedding of indelible stegosignatures or watermarks into the subject software and extraction of the stegosignatures embedded in the stegoprograms for purposes such as intellectual property protection. We introduce the novel concept of abstract software watermarking. The basic idea is that the watermark is hidden in the program code in such a way that it can only be extracted by an abstract interpretation of the (maybe non-standard) concrete semantics of this code. This static analysis-based approach allows the watermark to be recovered even if only a small part of the program code is present and does not even need that code to be executed. We illustrate the technique by a simple abstract watermarking protocol for methods of \Java{} classes. The concept applies equally well to any other kind of software (including hardware originally specified by software).
Categories and Subject Descriptors: D.2.9 Software Engineering/Management: Copyrights.
General Terms: Algorithms, Languages, Legal Aspects, Reliability, Security, Theory, Verification.
Keywords: Abstract Interpretation, Authentication, Copyrights Protection, Fingerprinting, Identification, Intellectual Property Protection, Obfuscation, Software Authorship, Software Watermarking, Static Analysis, Steganography, Stegoanalyst, Stegoattacks, Stegokey, Stegomark, Stegosignature, Tamper-proofing, Trustworthiness, Validation Watermarking.
Slides of the 25mn POPL'04 presentation are available in 4 slides per A4 landscape sheet format .pdf (154.1 KB)
Photos

Bibliographic reference:

\bibitem{CousotCousot04-POPL}
P.~Cousot and R.~Cousot.
\newblock An Abstract Interpretation-Based Framework for Software 
          Watermarking.
\newblock In \emph{Conference Record of the Thirtyfirst Annual ACM
  SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages},
  pages 173--185, Venice, Italy, January 14-16, 2004. ACM Press, New York,
  NY.

@inproceedings{CousotCousot04-POPL,
   author =    {Cousot, P{.} and Cousot, R{.}},
   title =     {An Abstract Interpretation-Based Framework for Software 
                Watermarking},
   pages =     {173--185},
   booktitle = {Conference Record of the Thirtyfirst Annual ACM 
                SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming 
                Languages},
   address =   {Venice, Italy},
   publisher = {ACM Press, New York, NY},
   month =     jan # " 14-16",
   year =      2004,
}

Copyrights: © ACM, (2004). This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Conference Record of the Thirtyfirst Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages.

copyright notice, ACM copyright
Last modified: Friday, 04-May-2012 14:12:02 EDT