White-box attack context cryptovirology

This paper presents the use of cryptographic mechanisms that are suited to the white box attack context (the attacker is supposed to have full control of the target program's execution environment) and as we will demonstrate, to a viral context. Use of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography by viruses has been popularized by polymorphic viruses and cryptoviruses. The latter are specialized in extorsion. New cryptographic mechanisms, corresponding to a particular implementation of traditional (black box) cryptography have been recently designed to ensure the deep protection of legitimate applications. These mechanisms can be misappropriated and used for the purpose of doing extorsion. We evaluate these new cryptographic primitives and discuss their (mis)use in a viral context.