Method based static software birthmarks: A new approach to derogate software piracy

Abstract

Software paradigm has been shifted from centralized to decentralized and distributed paradigm. This shift has not only scaled up distribution of software with increasing number of users but brought threats to the software industry with a massive volume of software piracy as well. After software is developed it is subjected to users with contracted rights for use but constrained with modifying, sharing or selling the software. Violation of the said constraints leads to formidable issue of software piracy. Distributed computing systems require effective techniques to minimize the piracy impact without degrading the system performance. Software birthmarking is one of the effective techniques to minimize the software piracy with guaranteed system performance. It ascertains intrinsic properties in the software program to detect copy of the software. In this paper we propose a ‘method based’ software birthmark technique targeting the distributed piracy threats. It finds the intrinsic properties in software methods by locating their code attributes, elements, and relation among code elements. The proposed approach not only identifies similarity of programs but detects program transformation as well. Moreover, our technique can spot out method as well as class theft while assuring the credibility and resilience properties of birthmarks.