Tsang, Hing Chung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-92). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.iv / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Software Cracking --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Objectives --- p.4 / Chapter 1.4 --- Contributions --- p.5 / Chapter 1.5 --- Thesis Outline --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Related Work --- p.8 / Chapter 2.1 --- Hardware-based Protection --- p.8 / Chapter 2.2 --- Network-based Protection --- p.9 / Chapter 2.3 --- Software-based Protection --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.1 --- Obfuscation --- p.11 / Chapter 2.3.2 --- Code Encryption --- p.13 / Chapter 2.3.3 --- Virtual Machine --- p.15 / Chapter 2.3.4 --- Self-checksumming --- p.16 / Chapter 2.3.5 --- Watermarking --- p.20 / Chapter 2.3.6 --- Self-modifying Code --- p.22 / Chapter 2.3.7 --- Software Aging --- p.23 / Chapter 3 --- Proposed Protection Scheme --- p.24 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.24 / Chapter 3.2 --- Protector --- p.27 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- A Traditional Protector Structure --- p.28 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Protector Construction --- p.31 / Chapter "3,2.3" --- Protector Implementation - Version 1 --- p.32 / Chapter 3.2.4 --- Protector Implementation - Version 2 --- p.35 / Chapter 3.2.5 --- Tamper Responses --- p.37 / Chapter 3.3 --- Protection Tree --- p.39 / Chapter 3.4 --- Non-deterministic Execution of Functions --- p.43 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- Introduction to n-version Functions --- p.44 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Probability Distributions --- p.45 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Implementation Issues --- p.47 / Chapter 3.5 --- Desired Properties --- p.49 / Chapter 4 --- Cracking Complexity and Security Analysis --- p.52 / Chapter 4.1 --- Cracking Complexity --- p.52 / Chapter 4.2 --- Security Analysis --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Automation Attacks --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Control Flow Graph Analysis --- p.55 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Cloning Attack --- p.56 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Dynamic Tracing --- p.56 / Chapter 5 --- Experiments --- p.58 / Chapter 5.1 --- Execution Time Overhead --- p.59 / Chapter 5.2 --- Tamper Responses --- p.67 / Chapter 6 --- Conclusion and Future Work --- p.73 / Chapter 6.1 --- Conclusion --- p.73 / Chapter 6.2 --- Comparison --- p.75 / Chapter 6.3 --- Future Work --- p.77 / Bibliography --- p.79