Semblance based disseminated software watermarking algorithm

Software piracy is a direct threat to the revenue of software vendors, requiring the need to employ effective and efficient techniques for detecting and preventing software piracy. One of the most promising attempts to protect intellectual property rights includes software watermarking. In this paper, we present a new technique for software watermarking which we call semblance based disseminated software watermarking algorithm (SDSW). Our technique embeds imitative instructions in object code using a defined dasiastring to instructionpsila mapping. These statements do not affect the overall execution semantics of program, however are hard to identify and extract for having resemblance with actual program code. This characteristic leads to the identification of the legitimate buyer, responsible for distribution of pirated copies to penalize legally. The effectiveness of proposed technique has been evaluated against published techniques implemented in Sandmark a watermarking application.