SaTC: CORE: Small: Collaborative: Evaluating Performance and Security of Executable Steganography for Surreptitious Programs

软件的知识产权保护仍然是商业部门的首要任务，因为假冒和盗版会侵蚀利润和市场份额，最终对公司、消费者和政府造成影响。用于证明数字所有权的水印和用于阻碍对抗性逆向工程的混淆目前用于提供某种程度的威慑。这个项目将研究软件保护的新方法，将可执行程序隐藏在其他可执行代码中。拟议的研究将调查使用“可执行隐写术”作为一种可能的反逆向工程技术和水印软件的一种方式。这项研究的目标是产生隐藏可执行代码的可行方法，扩展这种程序保护风格的最新技术，同时还基于容量、健壮性、可检测性、不可见性和弹性来描述其有效性。内布拉斯加州奥马哈大学和南阿拉巴马大学都为这项研究带来了更广泛的影响。这两所大学都有满足不同学生群体需求的丰富传统，都在EPSCoR （Established Program to stimulating Competitive Research）州，许多学生来自农村地区。两所大学都有广泛的K-12 STEM推广和服务奖学金，为未来的网络安全职业做准备。研究团队将通过课程项目、高级顶点练习和实验室直接让学生参与研究，作为其学术项目的一部分。除所开发的算法外，此项目的数据不包含任何个人或敏感信息。其他研究人员可以通过向pi的个人请求访问任何数据库和源代码。研究论文和已发表的会议论文等将通过项目网页：http://loki.ist.unomaha.edu/~wmahoney/ExecutableSteganography/index.html.This获得。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。

Intellectual property protection of software remains a priority for the commercial sector because counterfeiting and piracy erode profits and market share, ultimately causing impacts on companies, consumers and governments. Watermarking for proving digital ownership and obfuscation for hindering adversarial reverse engineering are currently used to provide some level of deterrence against this. This project will investigate novel methods of software protection, hiding executable programs within other executable code.Proposed research will investigate the use of "executable steganography" as a possible anti-reverse engineering technique and a way to watermark software. The goal of this research is to produce viable methods for hiding executable code, expanding the state-of-the-art for this style of program protection, while also characterizing its effectiveness based on capacity, robustness, detectability, invisibility, and resilience. Both University of Nebraska Omaha and University of South Alabama bring key opportunities for broader impacts of this research. Both have a rich tradition of meeting the needs of diverse student bodies, both are in Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) states, with numerous students coming from rural areas. Both universities have extensive K-12 STEM outreach and Scholarship for Service students preparing for future cybersecurity careers. The research teams will directly engage students in the research as part of their academic programs via course projects, senior capstone exercises, and labs. The data for this project will not contain any personal or sensitive information other than the algorithms developed. Other researchers will have access to any databases and the source code via individual requests to the PIs. Research papers and published conference papers, etc. will be available via the project web page: http://loki.ist.unomaha.edu/~wmahoney/ExecutableSteganography/index.html.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.