Resilient self-debugging software protection
- Author
- Bert Abrath (UGent) , Bart Coppens (UGent) , Ilja Nevolin and Bjorn De Sutter (UGent)
- Organization
- Project
- Abstract
- Debuggers are a popular reverse engineering and tampering tool. Self-debugging is an effective technique for applications to defend themselves against hostile debuggers. In penetration tests on state-of-the-art self-debugging, we observed several opportunities through which it could be attacked, however. We therefore improved upon the existing technique, making it more resilient by introducing reciprocal debugging and making the transfers of control between protected application and self-debugger more stealthy. This paper presents the improved self-debugging design, and details our research efforts into realizing reciprocal debugging. In our evaluation we show that the improved design is significantly harder for attackers to defeat.
- Keywords
- reverse engineering, software protection, anti-tampering, anti-debugging, self-debugging
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Citation
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication: http://hdl.handle.net/1854/LU-8668175
- MLA
- Abrath, Bert, et al. “Resilient Self-Debugging Software Protection.” 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), IEEE, 2020, pp. 606–15, doi:10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00088.
- APA
- Abrath, B., Coppens, B., Nevolin, I., & De Sutter, B. (2020). Resilient self-debugging software protection. 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), 606–615. https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00088
- Chicago author-date
- Abrath, Bert, Bart Coppens, Ilja Nevolin, and Bjorn De Sutter. 2020. “Resilient Self-Debugging Software Protection.” In 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), 606–15. IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00088.
- Chicago author-date (all authors)
- Abrath, Bert, Bart Coppens, Ilja Nevolin, and Bjorn De Sutter. 2020. “Resilient Self-Debugging Software Protection.” In 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), 606–615. IEEE. doi:10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00088.
- Vancouver
- 1.Abrath B, Coppens B, Nevolin I, De Sutter B. Resilient self-debugging software protection. In: 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW). IEEE; 2020. p. 606–15.
- IEEE
- [1]B. Abrath, B. Coppens, I. Nevolin, and B. De Sutter, “Resilient self-debugging software protection,” in 2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW), Genoa, Italy, 2020, pp. 606–615.
@inproceedings{8668175,
abstract = {{Debuggers are a popular reverse engineering and tampering tool. Self-debugging is an effective technique for applications to defend themselves against hostile debuggers. In penetration tests on state-of-the-art self-debugging, we observed several opportunities through which it could be attacked, however. We therefore improved upon the existing technique, making it more resilient by introducing reciprocal debugging and making the transfers of control between protected application and self-debugger more stealthy. This paper presents the improved self-debugging design, and details our research efforts into realizing reciprocal debugging. In our evaluation we show that the improved design is significantly harder for attackers to defeat.}},
author = {{Abrath, Bert and Coppens, Bart and Nevolin, Ilja and De Sutter, Bjorn}},
booktitle = {{2020 IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy Workshops (EuroS&PW)}},
isbn = {{9781728185972}},
keywords = {{reverse engineering,software protection,anti-tampering,anti-debugging,self-debugging}},
language = {{eng}},
location = {{Genoa, Italy}},
pages = {{606--615}},
publisher = {{IEEE}},
title = {{Resilient self-debugging software protection}},
url = {{http://doi.org/10.1109/EuroSPW51379.2020.00088}},
year = {{2020}},
}
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