Stealthy Code Obfuscation Technique for Software Security

Code obfuscation, a tool converts a program into one that is functionally identical to the original but which is much more difficult for attacker to understand is currently the most viable technique for preventing malicious reverse engineering of software. This paper examines the use of opaque predicates as one of the building blocks of obfuscating transformations that conceal the control flow of the program in conjunction with obfuscation techniques employed by viruses in commercial side software to achieve the power of virus's hiding with the aim of improving the quality of overall obfuscation and the protection of intellectual property. This work utilizes an IF statement mechanism as a way to construct inexpensive and stealthy opaque predicates. Experimental results indicate that significant portions of source code that have been obfuscated using the proposed technique are disassembled incorrectly, thereby protecting the functionality of the codes.