A novel solution against Hybrid Static-Dynamic Disassembly in embedded ARM platforms

Nowadays, most reasonable software protection techniques are proposed only to resist static-only attacks. However, with the development of Hybrid Static-Dynamic Disassembly (HSDD), the techniques used to prevent static-only attacks can be easily detected and eliminated, and the difficulty of crack is greatly reduced. In this paper, in order to resist HSDD, the Instruction Transform Algorithm (ITA) and the Recover Instructions in Hardware Interrupt (RIHI) are proposed to distort the original binary code and to recover the encrypted binary code respectively. With these two new schemes, the security of software can be extremely enhanced, making HSDD more difficult to achieve. In addition, a new form of Vigenère cipher is introduced to make the encryption and decryption of Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) instructions more efficient and effective.