Can a Program Reverse-Engineer Itself?

Antoine Amarilli; David Naccache; Pablo Rauzy; Emil Simion

Paper 2011/497

Can a Program Reverse-Engineer Itself?

Antoine Amarilli, David Naccache, Pablo Rauzy, and Emil Simion

Abstract

Shape-memory alloys are metal pieces that "remember" their original cold-forged shapes and return to the pre-deformed shape after heating. In this work we construct a software analogous of shape-memory alloys: programs whose code resists obfuscation. We show how to pour arbitrary functions into protective envelops that allow recovering the functions' {\sl exact initial code} after obfuscation. We explicit the theoretical foundations of our method and provide a concrete implementation in Scheme.

Metadata

Available format(s): PDF
Category: Foundations
Publication info: Published elsewhere. Unknown where it was published
Keywords: obfuscation
Contact author(s): david naccache @ ens fr
History: 2011-09-18: received
Short URL: https://ia.cr/2011/497
License: CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2011/497,
      author = {Antoine Amarilli and David Naccache and Pablo Rauzy and Emil Simion},
      title = {Can a Program Reverse-Engineer Itself?},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2011/497},
      year = {2011},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2011/497}
}