A Software Protection Framework Based on Thin Virtual Machine Using Distorted Encryption

The technology of software protection based on virtual machine is a hot research field of software protection. Considering the impact on the performance of target software, traditional virtual machine can only protect several key functions of target software, which makes it unable to prevent reverse engineering for the whole software. In order to balance the performance overheads against protection strength, we proposed a thin virtual machine based software protection framework using distorted encryption (TVMBDE) in this paper. Based on improving the algorithms of instruction transformation of traditional virtual machines, the framework makes use of thin virtual machine protection technology to enhance the efficiency and integration of distorted encryption so as to ensure the security. In order to implement overall protection, the common part of target software will be protected in low-power, while the key parts will be protected in high-power. Analysis and testing show the framework is effective, which achieves the purpose of protecting the whole software.