Obfuscation through the observer-effect : thinking outside the virtual black-box
Author
Blackthorne, Jeremy LeeOther Contributors
Yener, Bülent, 1959-; Milanova, Ana; Szymanśki, Bolesław;Date Issued
2015-05Subject
Computer scienceDegree
MS;Terms of Use
This electronic version is a licensed copy owned by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. Copyright of original work retained by author.; Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesMetadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In this work, we initiate a theoretical study of obfuscation with regards to programs that interact with a user and an environment. We define the System-Interaction model to formally represent this additional dimension of interaction. We also define a semantically obfuscated program within our model as one that hides all semantic predicates from a computationally bounded adversary. This is possible while still remaining useful because semantically obfuscated programs can interact with an operating system while showing nothing to the user. Next, we analyze the necessary and sufficient conditions of achieving this standard of obfuscation. Finally, we demonstrate a candidate approach to achieving those conditions on current computers.; Theoretical investigations of obfuscation have been built around a model of a single Turing machine which interacts with a user. A drawback of this model is that it cannot account for the most common approach to obfuscation used by malware, the observer-effect. The observer-effect describes the situation in which the act of observing something changes it. Malware implements the observer-effect by detecting and acting on changes in its environment caused by user observation.;Description
May 2015; School of ScienceDepartment
Dept. of Computer Science;Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NYRelationships
Rensselaer Theses and Dissertations Online Collection;Access
CC BY-NC-ND. Users may download and share copies with attribution in accordance with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. No commercial use or derivatives are permitted without the explicit approval of the author.;Collections
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as CC BY-NC-ND. Users may download and share copies with attribution in accordance with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. No commercial use or derivatives are permitted without the explicit approval of the author.