Code Obfuscation using Code Splitting with Self-modifying Code

Abstract

Code Obfuscation is a protection technique that transforms the software into a semantically equivalent one which is strenuous to reverse engineer. As a part of software protection and security, code obfuscation got commercial interest from both vendors' side to keep their proprietary as secret and customers' side to have a trusted software that don't leek or destroy their personal information. Today most of the software distributions contain complete source code in the form of machine code, which are easy to decompile and increase the risk of malicious reverse engineering. The basic idea of the obfuscating technique that has been described in this research work is to hide the proprietary code section through preventive design obfuscation and insertion of self-modifying code at binary level. In this proposed technique the combination, while complementing each other, provides protection against all kind of reverse engineering.