DAAV: Dynamic API authority vectors for detecting software theft

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel birthmark, a dynamic API authority vector (DAAV), for detecting software theft. DAAV satisfies four essential requirements for good birthmarks-credibility, resiliency, scalability, and packing-free-while existing birthmarks fail to satisfy all of them together. In particular, existing static birthmarks are unable to handle the packed programs and existing dynamic birthmarks do not satisfy credibility and resiliency. Our experimental results demonstrate that DAAV provides satisfying credibility and resiliency compared with existing dynamic birthmarks and also can cover packed programs.