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Versatile Cybersecurity pp 141–167Cite as

Cryptographic Program Obfuscation: Practical Solutions and Application-Driven Models

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Part of the book series: Advances in Information Security ((ADIS,volume 72))

Abstract

Program obfuscation is about modifying source or machine code into functionally equivalent code that is hard to understand to a human or some other program. Early obfuscation techniques included heuristic non-cryptographic code transformations, many of which however, have been found to be ineffective against sufficiently motivated adversaries. The recent area of cryptographic program obfuscation targets the design and implementation of program obfuscators that are provably secure under a widely accepted intractability assumption, following the standard of modern cryptography solutions. In this chapter we provide a brief summary of the state of the art in cryptographic program obfuscation, focusing on two main aspects: first, there are many implementations of point function obfuscators, satisfying different obfuscation notions, and many of them can be used with practical performance guarantees; second, multiple application-driven obfuscation models and problems can be generated, where practical attack classes can be addressed by leveraging current implementations of point function obfuscators, as well as potential future practical implementations of special-purpose obfuscators.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Perspecta Labs, Basking Ridge, NJ, USA

    Giovanni Di Crescenzo

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  1. Giovanni Di Crescenzo
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Correspondence to Giovanni Di Crescenzo .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Mauro Conti

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer, India

    Gaurav Somani

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    Radha Poovendran

Additional information

This work was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) via U.S. Army Research Office (ARO), contract number W911NF-15-C-0233. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation hereon. Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of DARPA, ARO or the U.S. Government. Approved for Public Release, Distribution Unlimited.

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Crescenzo, G.D. (2018). Cryptographic Program Obfuscation: Practical Solutions and Application-Driven Models. In: Conti, M., Somani, G., Poovendran, R. (eds) Versatile Cybersecurity. Advances in Information Security, vol 72. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97643-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97643-3_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97643-3

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