A chaos-based robust software watermarking

In this paper we propose a robust software watermarking based on chaos against several limitations of existing software watermarking. The algorithm combines the anti-reverse engineering technique, chaotic system and the idea of Easter Egg software watermarks. The global protection for the program is provided by dispersing watermark over the whole code of the program with chaotic dispersion coding; the resistance against reverse engineering is improved by using the anti-reverse engineering technique. In the paper, we implement the scheme in the Intel i386 architecture and the Windows operating system, and analyze the robustness and the performance degradation of watermarked program. Analysis indicates that the algorithm resists various types of semantics-preserving transformation attacks and is good tolerance for reverse engineering attacks.