WO2003029939A2 - Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content - Google Patents
Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content Download PDFInfo
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- WO2003029939A2 WO2003029939A2 PCT/US2001/044045 US0144045W WO03029939A2 WO 2003029939 A2 WO2003029939 A2 WO 2003029939A2 US 0144045 W US0144045 W US 0144045W WO 03029939 A2 WO03029939 A2 WO 03029939A2
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Classifications
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- G06F21/00—Security arrangements for protecting computers, components thereof, programs or data against unauthorised activity
- G06F21/10—Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material ; Digital rights management [DRM]
- G06F21/12—Protecting executable software
- G06F21/14—Protecting executable software against software analysis or reverse engineering, e.g. by obfuscation
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- G—PHYSICS
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- G06F—ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
- G06F21/00—Security arrangements for protecting computers, components thereof, programs or data against unauthorised activity
- G06F21/10—Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material ; Digital rights management [DRM]
Definitions
- This invention is related to the field of protecting digital information from being copied, modified, or used by unauthorized parties.
- this invention is related to systems and methods that prevent unauthorized access to, and modification of, digital data as found on computer systems and consumer-appliance systems that utilize Compact Disc (CD), DVD, or other removable media (such as Flash Memory on standard or proprietary cards or sticks, or other non-volatile memory) technologies, or any storage media of any type, or any such content delivered via any network connection of any type.
- CD Compact Disc
- DVD or other removable media (such as Flash Memory on standard or proprietary cards or sticks, or other non-volatile memory) technologies, or any storage media of any type, or any such content delivered via any network connection of any type.
- More than one of these approaches may be defeated if anticipated by using "ProcDump", a memory lifting tool that is available free on the World Wide Web (such a tool may also be easily written following technical instructions that may also be found on the web) in conjunction with SoftlCE, a powerful debugging tool, which may also be found on the web.
- a computer system is usually the platform and tool of choice for one intent on reverse engineering or cracking these protection mechanisms; even if the protected content's target was not a computer system such as a PC but rather an appliance computing device such as a game console, the content can best be modified ("hacked") on a computer.
- the present invention is directed to a digital content security method and system that does not depend solely upon secrecy or obscurity in order to be effective.
- the present invention is directed to a system and method for storing encrypted data, subdivided into arbitrarily small collections of bits within other files, or between them, or outside a file system's known storage areas entirely.
- the data size used in the discussion below is 4-bit nibbles and 8-bit bytes , but it should be noted that any data size is applicable to the principles ofthe present invention.
- the location for the information is arrived at algorithmically, and no single individual location is inherently secret, but knowledge ofthe totality ofthe locations and their order of traversal is critical.
- each 8-bit word or byte is broken down into 4-bit nibbles, and is merged 4 bits at a time with a completely unrelated stream of bits, which may also themselves be equally meaningful 4-bit nibbles.
- Such interleaved multiplexing is not limited to the two-way example above, but may be considered N-way, where N is an arbitrary positive integer of any size.
- the locations are not dynamically arrived at but are rather chosen by a mapping process and an encoded location map is generated. This map may be itself encrypted, then subdivided into 4-bit nibbles or 8 -bit bytes and itself hidden.
- any encrypted file is locked by taking its decryption key and then encrypting that key using another encryption method or key.
- the encrypted key is placed in a known location, such as the beginning, end, or at a known offset within the file, or is subdivided into bits and scattered into the file in known, and therefore retrievable, locations.
- the locked file itself may then be subdivided, multiplexed, further encrypted, and hidden, as needed.
- content can be replaced with translocated content, such that, in the example of executable content, the file a.exe is replaced with another file a.exe.
- the contents of a.exe are encrypted, locked, and hidden as described above.
- Upon execution of a.exe the content is retrieved, decrypted if necessary, executed as desired.
- executable software content such as .exe files
- all other digital content such as an audio a.wav file
- the playback environment can be provided within the secured entity, or can be something that was always resident on the system prior to installation ofthe secured entity.
- digital content (whether or not it is also hidden and/or encrypted) is modified such that it is tokenized or otherwise obfuscated, and then when it comes time for the content to be used, it is interpreted within a custom interpreter that is a part ofthe system.
- An example of such is to modify a compiler such that the assembly language output is nonstandard, and thus require that the execution occur in an interpreter designed for the task.
- Such construction is possible even using decades-old utilities such as LEXX and YaCC, traditionally compiler creation tools.
- Such an interpreter is composed of a parser which consumes tokens, converts the tokenized logic to native computing instructions, obfuscates these instructions with anti-disassembly logic, and feeds them to the standard system interfaces.
- Such interposition of execution layers makes debugging a nontrivial task, and the anti-disassembly logic eliminates the use of many popular disassembly tools
- the present invention employs saturation "chaff logic to create a large amount of harmless and meaningless (yet utterly real in appearance and content, and apparently meaningful) information designed to saturate or confuse logging, reverse engineering, and debugging tools.
- saturation "chaff logic can be targeted at specific systems, such that large amounts of I/O to the CD device can be used to mask any meaningful activity that may also be occurring on a device.
- the saturation invention is particularly useful against attempts to reverse engineer a protection system by monitoring its activity, because any such eventual logging/journal output of these tools must be reviewed and interpreted by human beings, and the overall volume (instead of 100 or 500 lines of logging on a device in a few minutes, this invention can generate tens of thousands of spurious log events in the same time period) can make it difficult or impossible to sort out the useful information from the chaff.
- the present invention prevents sophisticated monitoring tools from monitoring and logging file access. This is accomplished by creating a driver extension layer, referred to as a "shim", and attaching it to all appropriate operating system interfaces. Note that these shim interfaces on most consumer computer operating systems allow chaining, so that multiple layers can be stacked dynamically. This is also commonly called “hooking” on Windows operating systems.
- the present invention provides security by selecting where to hook (whether you choose to hook before or after a monitoring shim/hooking tool, such as FileMon, is significant; one can even hook both before AND after, to provide the tool with spurious input information). The mechanism rehooks at the desired depth(s) with variable frequency to defeat subsequent monitoring tool invocations.
- the present invention creates a driver extension layer, and shims or hooks the all relevant operating system interfaces, (and re-attach as above if desired).
- access filtering capabilities are employed to alter access to secured content, or to security-threat content.
- the present invention employs an authorization process, which serves as a significant part ofthe decision in determining the status and origins of a task or process on the system and make an access determination.
- the present invention includes an "assassin" construct; a system entity that operates to monitor activity and take action as needed. If, for example, the system were composed of multiple processes, one or more of which were protective by nature, and someone were to kill or stop one ofthe protective processes, an assassin process would take note of that occurrence, and would take action.
- the authorization process described below is a significant part of this decision in determining the status and origins of a task or process on the system.
- Such action might include disabling the rest ofthe system to prevent tampering, or killing the tampering process, or both.
- Assassin constructs are most useful if they serve some other purpose essential to the system, such as if, in the example above, the assassin process also served as a system's decryption service, such that killing the assassin would result in loss of ability to decrypt by the system, guaranteeing failure.
- Such assassin processes can detect the existence of specific tools both dormant and active, and prohibit the protective system's exposure to them.
- the present invention includes an "authorization" construct.
- an "authorization" construct Such a process is aware of how the operating system tracks the lineage of processes and tasks, and can determine parentage quickly and accurately, so that is can be used to authorize file accesses to appropriate subtasks of an authorized task.
- the level of identification required by the system is insufficient so this aspect ofthe invention can bypass system query utilities and instead walk the system's process memory and track the lineage, creation, and deletion of processes and tasks.
- the present invention is first directed to a system and method for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data.
- Digital content data is subdivided into data segments.
- the data segments are modified with second data to generate modified data.
- the modified data are then stored at predetermined memory locations.
- the digital content data may comprise any form of digital data that is stored, transmitted, or utilized on or between computer systems of all types. Such data includes, but is not limited to, audio, video, documents, electronic text and software and the like.
- the data segments are preferably of a variable length, and the second data preferably comprises a randomly generated data stream.
- the second data may optionally comprise portions ofthe digital content data.
- the modified data may likewise be encrypted and stored, for example with an encryption key, which, may in turn itself be encrypted.
- the encryption key may be stored with the encrypted modified data at the predetermined memory locations, and may be partitioned among the encrypted modified data.
- the digital content data may comprise first and second digital content data, wherein the predetermined memory locations are selected as combinations ofthe locations at which the first and second digital content data were originally stored.
- a map of locations at which the modified data is stored may be generated and stored at the predetermined memory locations.
- the memory locations reside on a system and the system is scanned to determine available memory locations. Target memory locations within the available memory locations at which to store the modified data are determined. The modified data is then stored at the target memory locations.
- the available memory locations may be located within file system locations and outside file system locations.
- Modification ofthe data segments preferably comprises interleaving the data segments with the second data to generate interleaved data.
- the second data may be tokenized, for example with lexical equivalents of assembly language commands.
- the lexical equivalents may be consumed by a system interpreter, in turn generating alternative assembly language commands selected to obfuscate the digital content data in the event of an unauthorized access.
- the present invention is also directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data in a system having memory locations comprising.
- Digital content data is subdivided into data segments, which are, in turn, modified with second data to generate modified data.
- the system is scanned to determine available memory locations and target memory locations within the available memory locations at which to store the modified data are selected.
- the modified data are then stored at the target memory locations.
- the present invention is further directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a system.
- Digital content data is modified with saturation data to generate modified data, and the modified data are stored at predetermined memory locations on the system to deter unauthorized access ofthe digital content data.
- the present invention is further directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a system wherein a table of contents identifies files stored at memory locations ofthe system. A first memory location referring to a location at which at which first data file is stored is identified at the table of contents. The first memory location in the table of contents is then modified to refer to a second data file at a second location. Upon an attempt at access by the system ofthe first data file, the second data file is accessed if the attempt is unauthorized.
- the first data file is replaced with the second data file and upon an attempt at access by the system ofthe first data file, the second data file is accessed if the attempt is unauthorized.
- the present invention is further directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a system.
- An operating system interface ofthe system is monitored to determine access of operating system resources.
- a shim is repeatedly generated on the operating system interface to deter unauthorized access ofthe digital content data.
- the present invention is further directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a system wherein a portion ofthe digital content data is substituted with token data to generate tokenized data.
- the tokenized data are stored at predetermined memory locations on the system to deter unauthorized access ofthe digital content data.
- the present invention is further directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a system wherein an operating system interface operating on the system and the digital content data at an assassin process are monitored to determine whether an unauthorized attempt at accessing the digital content data occurs. In the event of unauthorized access, the unauthorized access is deterred and communicated to the operating system interface.
- the present invention is further directed to a method and system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data in a system having memory locations wherein the system is scanned to determine available memory locations based on a file system identifying locations of files oh the system. Target memory locations are determined within the available memory locations at which to store the digital content data. The digital content data is stored at the target memory locations.
- the present invention includes a software development kit and toolkit, which embodies the aspects ofthe inventions described above and allows for their application to target content without revealing the details ofthe construct methods to the user.
- the present invention is thus further directed to a system for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data in a system having memory locations wherein the system enables a user to select from a plurality of tool modules, each module providing a service for protecting digital content from unauthorized use such that a user can protect digital content.
- the tool modules may comprise modules that perform functions selected from the group of functions consisting of: interleaving; tokenization; obfuscation; saturation; translocation; shimming and assassination.
- the present invention is further directed to systems and methods that allow for the delivery of content in a fashion that prohibits content modification and duplication by unauthorized persons.
- the invention mechanisms detailed in this document enable, support and secure the delivery of software titles, audio, video, and text/graphic/e-book/e-presentation formats using both hard media and network content delivery models.
- the present invention further processes and packages the components of a digital content product, for example the standard component contents of a hard media digital product, including executable files, documentation files, image files, and audio files.
- a standard hard media product may be taken in entirety from a CD release and converted into a securely downloadable product. Some or all ofthe content is indelibly watermarked with serialized purchase information unique to each purchaser at the download site before being downloaded.
- kit components can be packaged as large archives or can be stored individually (in the same form as a hard media kit, including optionally, directory structures) and then manufactured on-demand, per-user, per purchase.
- the final kit is packaged as a collection of encrypted archives, or as a single monolithic archive, securely encrypted, and made installable at the appropriate time by a secure installation process.
- Each installation of the product can optionally be made more secure by requiring authentication; multiple invention methods may be used including network authentication and authentication from locally hidden data and/or local computing device and peripheral configuration information.
- installation or re-installation may be disallowed at any time by the vendor based on their criteria (number of times, frequency, etc).
- Such remote authentication invention methods may be added to hard media based products as well.
- the present invention further allows for modification ofthe product's files, both before the download while still on the server (or before being copied to the server), and also the application files in the product directory after the installation, on the customer computer.
- This invention inserts hidden data into these product files, this hidden data incorporating among other identifying data a securely encrypted transaction ID, which may also be modified by a function based on information about the target system's component-specific configuration information.
- the hidden data may alternately or inclusively be a simple numeric index or may also have meaningful content interleaved into itself, such data hiding concepts defined herein.
- the data may be of any length.
- the present invention further authorizes the execution of product components by providing a service that correlates attributes ofthe executable product with the system which is the target ofthe execution ofthe product.
- ESD content delivery phase may be authenticated by means of purchase (or other) unique transaction-specific information and/or system specific information.
- the present invention further processes product files in order to make room for more hidden data items. These additional reserved spaces for hidden data items are integrated directly into any desired product files and are optionally pre-filled with filler content
- the present invention further segments the contents ofthe download kit such that specific small and critical files or even portions of such files are segregated from the main kit.
- the downloaded installation kit is therefore incomplete in small but critical ways. The installation process requires subsequent authenticated reconnections to the download host, followed by small and volatile downloads of these critical items.
- the present invention further segments the contents ofthe installed digital product such that specific critical files and/or portions of such files are segregated and encrypted in a fashion that makes the installed product only function properly on the intended target system.
- certain chosen program elements are intentionally incomplete, and will be completed by means of executable information extracted from the authorization process, in some cases by hiding the information within the authentication response.
- the authorization process can provide the system with both numerical encrypted information (keys for further system decryption use) and executable content critical to task completion.
- content has certain sections altered such that key elements are removed and hidden elsewhere, (on the media itself in the case of hard media, on the network in other cases, on other system storage devices in the case of something already installed on a computer system) in secret locations. Execution requires these hidden elements be found and replaced in their original locations within the content. These elements are stored in locations that would not be copied easily with either the installer media or the installed product directory.
- the present invention is further directed to mechanisms that detect the presence of classes and instances of software development tools (known variously as
- ICES ICES, Debuggers, dump/lift tools, process fixup tools) and which initiates responses (exit, kill intrusion process, etc) when invoked on a system that has been thus instrumented for hacker purposes.
- the present invention further determines whether the environment is safe (criteria include absence of some or all software development tools and emulation environments) and allows the protected title, to run. After this occurs, subsequent execution of any and all prohibited tools is disallowed in part this is accomplished by means of methods discussed in the Translocation claims attached herein; by translocation ofthe desired tool with a stub that exits. Other methods include disabling certain input device (keyboard and mouse) responses as needed.
- the system in order to defend the system from attack, the system exits upon being compromised or otherwise touched by unauthorized tools or methods.
- the exit itself may be delayed or deferred to obfuscate the logic behind the exit process.
- Other cooperating components ofthe invention processes, threads, tasks and other logical algorithmic entities
- all system defense related tasks are encapsulated within other routines commonly used by the system. For example, it can be that every file open also triggers a defensive routine that scans memory or rewrites memory. In this manner, any and all system activity act as events that trigger defensive routines, so these routines do not necessarily have to poll or loop as their exclusive method of acting upon the system. Removal of these defenses is non- trivial as they can be deeply integrated into every aspect ofthe system.
- each process, thread or task in the system has a dual or multiple role.
- all strings and other resource elements used are encrypted and decrypted by the system in a volatile fashion when used, and then disposed of, such that they cannot be easily searched for within the code either statically or in memory.
- data values that are critical to the system are read and rewritten by a number of decoy or spoof processes, such that debugger watchpoints on these values, if any, will be triggered excessively, and thus it will be difficult to determine which accesses are decoy and which are valid without much deeper debugging.
- system and product code can maintain itself in a difficult- to-modify state even if modification is attempted by a sophisticated debugger, editor or other tool.
- Key code elements are rewritten in place, in memory, using whatever mode of privilege is required, many times per second (tens, hundreds, tuned to be optimal as needed), at initialization and during execution, so that any attempts to tamper the code will be changed back to the original state.
- the system may also choose to exit as a result ofthe tampering.
- a classic hacker attack the modification of Import Tables, is defeated in this way. All key code segments are duplicated in an encrypted archive, the archive is hidden (perhaps within files, between files, or outside the file system) read from that archive (some part ofthe read and decryption occurs in the virtual machine context described elsewhere in the document).
- Decoy archives and decoy read processes are also established which read from nonencrypted decoy code and write it over the sections, or seem to write it over the sections (writes through the I/O subsystem which are then defeated by tapping into the subsystem and tossing the data away) such that attempts to modify these decoy archives result in no change to the running code.
- certain critical executable components are processed before shipment to be populated with tens or hundreds of thousands of data values which trigger debugger breakpoints in many debuggers. During normal execution ofthe title in a non-debug environment, these breakpoints are handled by a null handler and little negative performance impact is achieved.
- each breakpoint stops the debugger and requires the intruder to at the least click the mouse and type into the keyboard.
- a single execution of such a title would require on the order of a hundred thousand mouse-clicks and keyboard presses.
- the purpose of such is to significantly deter unauthorized debugging, and at the very least to render it as slow and painful as possible.
- resistance to tools used to "memory lift” or “memory dump” is achieved by modifying (corrupting) large parts ofthe code before packaging and storing the original correct parts elsewhere.
- This modification can take the form of gross and/or subtle corruption, yielding unexecutable code or subtle logical alterations in code that runs.
- a cooperating synchronized system process modifies the code back to the correct executable state but only in a rolling window of context such that at no time is the entire body ofthe content correct, just those parts that are required at the current execution time. Once executed these lines of code are re-corrupted.
- source, object, or executable code is processed to generate variant different versions of executable code, by means of replacement of content with functionally synonymous content.
- different assembly language instructions and ordering, that produce the same functional outcome are generated, such that no two such versions share the same fingerprint or the same code-line-number relationship per instruction.
- This variation is designed to reduce or eliminate the broadly disseminated effectiveness of hacker tutorials and documents that usually depend on specific line-number directions.
- FIG. 1 is a block diagram of a computer system or consumer computerized appliance device to provide an understanding of how the systems and methods ofthe invention interact with such devices.
- FIG. 2 is a diagram demonstrating the flow of digital content from its delivery media through a computer system such as the one in FIG. 1, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 3 is a flow diagram that describes the creation of an interleaved, multiplexed, encrypted content stream such as those used for information hiding and content watermarking, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating the placement of hidden, stored content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 5 is a block diagram illustrating an alternative or additional placement method for hidden, stored content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 6 is a flow diagram illustrating the storage of digital content in a hidden, secure manner, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating a method for retrieving such hidden, stored content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating four related methods of securing an encrypted watermark or encrypted stream, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 9 is a block diagram illustrating three related methods for translocating content in a secure fashion, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 10 is a flow diagram that illustrates a method to prepare content for translocation, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 11 is a flow diagram illustrating a method to invoke and utilize translocated content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 12 is a flow diagram illustrating a method to tokenize and obfuscate content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 13 is a detailed flow diagram illustrating a method to tokenize and obfuscate content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 14 is a further detailed flow diagram illustrating a method to tokenize and obfuscate content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 15 is a high level flow diagram illustrating a method to utilize previously tokenized and obfuscated content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 16 is a detailed flow diagram illustrating a method to utilize previously tokenized and obfuscated content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 17 is a flow diagram illustrating a method to saturate logging and debugging tools and techniques as a method of providing additional security, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 18 is a detailed flow diagram describing a method to saturate logging and debugging tools and techniques as a method of providing additional security, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 19 is a further detailed flow diagram describing a method to saturate logging and debugging tools and techniques as a method of providing additional security, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 20 is a detailed control flow diagram describing a method to saturate logging and debugging tools and techniques as a method of providing additional security, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 21 is a flow diagram describing the aspects of this invention that allow for the secure attachment (hooking) of device shims, operating system shims, and device driver shims, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 22 is a flow diagram describing the aspects of this invention that allow for the security obfuscation ofthe activity of device shims, operating system shims, and device driver shims.
- FIG. 23 is a flow diagram describing a mechanism used to prevent the execution of, or access to, content that is disallowed, or to redirect access to other content in a fashion transparent to the accessing party or process, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 24 is a flow diagram that illustrates a method for the creation of protective "assassin" processes, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 25 is a flow diagram that describes methods that determine authorization for access to content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 26 is a flow diagram that describes methods that determine authorization for access to content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 27 is a flow diagram of a method that takes as input the standard contents of a digital hard media product (including but not limited to software, e- books, entertainment and game media, etc) and produces as output a securely downloadable digital content product, in accordance with the present invention.
- a digital hard media product including but not limited to software, e- books, entertainment and game media, etc
- FIG. 28 is a flow diagram of a method that establishes the unique identity of the Target Computing device, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 29 is a flow diagram of a method that processes digital content components as part ofthe kitting process for electronic content distribution, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 30 is a flow diagram of a method that assigns unique identifying values to individual subcomponents ofthe Target Computing device, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 31 is a flow diagram of a method that inserts unique identifying data into digital content product components, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 32 is a flow diagram of a method that authenticates access to and use of digital content by verifying unique identifying data found within the digital content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 33 is a flow diagram of a method that provides authentication data to the method of FIG. 32, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 34 is a flow diagram of a method that creates additional space within digital content for the later insertion of unique identifying data, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 35 is a flow diagram of a method that inserts unique identifying data into digital content on a server, using such created locations as those created in the flow diagram of FIG. 34 or other space as found within the content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 36 is a flow diagram of a method that inserts unique identifying data into digital content as it is being installed onto a Target Computing device, using such created locations as those created in FIG. 34 or other space as found within the content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 37 is a flow diagram of a method that renders incomplete and thereby prohibits execution of or use of digital content on systems other than those authorized to execute it, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 38 is a flow diagram of a method that encrypts and hides unique system and acquisition transactional identifying information, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 39 is a flow diagram of a method that scans memory on a Target Computing device to determine whether certain prohibited executable applications, tools, and files are present, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 40 is a flow diagram of a method that determines whether the system is an actual or virtual computing device, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 41 is a flow diagram of a method that disables the use of certain keystroke sequences, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 42 is a flow diagram of a method that disables the keyboard entirely when desired for certain input window or dialogue focus configurations, and selectively allows it for others, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 43 is a flow diagram of a method that disables mouse button function entirely when desired for certain input window or dialogue focus configurations, and selectively allows it for others, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 44 is a flow diagram of a method that detects compromise ofthe system in the form ofthe exit of other system components and which itself then initiates a cascading exit event, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 45 is a flow diagram of a method that allows cooperating system component to more securely write data to one another, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 46 is a flow diagram of a method that allows cooperating system component to more securely read data from one another, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 47 is a flow diagram of a method that allows cooperating system component to more securely write data to one another, using further levels of indirection than those shown in FIG. 45, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 48 is a flow diagram of a method that embodies security or security system functions within any standard system function, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 49 is a flow diagram of a method that embodies exit functions as in FIG. 44 within any standard system function, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 50 is a flow diagram of a method that converts system resources such as strings into encrypted resources to reduce their search vulnerability and comprehension, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 51 is a flow diagram of a method that renders encrypted resources such as those created in FIG. 50 usable as needed, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 52 is a flow diagram of a method that touches many memory locations in order to generate excessive debugger event traffic, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 53 is a flow diagram of a method that overwrites data in memory with such rapidity and frequency that attempts to alter this in memory data via unauthorized means are eradicated automatically, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 54 is a flow diagram of a method that inserts a number of breakpoints into target digital content in order to render unauthorized debugging extremely difficult, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 55 is a flow diagram of a method that protects digital content from being memory lifted by creating a "rolling window of corrected code" in an otherwise corrupted body of digital content, in accordance with the present invention.
- FIG. 56 is a flow diagram of a method that creates multiply variant digital content, in order to increase the difficulty of cooperative debugging and cracking of digital content when deployed, in accordance with the present invention.
- This invention and its embodiments may be implemented on a personal computer or general purpose digital computer as shown in FIG. 1, including, but not limited to, single- or multiple-processor-based Windows, Linux or Macintosh desktop computers such as those found with increasing frequency in contemporary homes and offices.
- Embodiments of this invention may also be implemented on a digital processing circuit, including, but not limited to, those found in CD and DND consumer audio/video appliance components or systems, stationary or mobile applications.
- Embodiments of this invention are also well suited for implementation on other computing appliance devices such as hard-disk or random access memory based video and audio entertainment appliances which may be digital-processing- circuit based, or may be based on general-purpose digital computing architectures.
- this invention is applicable to all digital content uses, because all such uses have the same basic elements; the content 7 is input to the system in some fashion as shown in FIG. 2, stored for some period of time in the system's memory 8 (whether disk, volatile RAM of any kind, or nonvolatile RAM of any kind), and executed on a processor 9, whether the main processor ofthe system, or an auxiliary processor, and whether the content itself is directly executable on the processor or is executed within a helper application (such as an audio, video, or word processing application, depending on content type).
- the systems and methods ofthe present invention may be embodied and implemented on a general-purpose digital computer or personal computer system 6 as shown in FIG.l.
- Such a system commonly includes an input device 1 (one or more may be connected; this includes anything which provides external content and data to the computer as input, such as a mouse or keyboard or scanner).
- Such a computer system 6 also has as a subcomponent a collection of software and hardware components 5 that comprise the processor, all system bus and cache lines, and the running operating system and all of its subcomponents.
- Output is presented to the user via one or more output devices 4, which include, but are not limited to, the computer's display (CRT or LCD) and the hardware that drives it, and can also include printers, speakers and sound cards, and radio frequency, S-video, component, or digital video outputs for consumer/entertainment applications and devices.
- the computer system 6 may be a general purpose home or office or mobile computer system.
- Such systems allow for the usage/consumption/execution of a variety of forms of digital content; the invention disclosed herein can be applied to all forms of such digital content and the foregoing will describe some ofthe forms of this content on this computing platform family.
- Such systems are generally multiple- component level hardware-based systems, comprised of a motherboard or main- board, with various specialized components (such as I/O cards, video cards, processors, memory) attached to it by means of connectors.
- Each such card and the motherboard itself and the attached components have some amount of executable firmware located on various non-volatile memory 3 integrated circuit components, but the majority of the system's operational logic is driven by executable operating system code that is stored on media (non-removable or removable magnetic and or optical media, or non-volatile random access memory media).
- executable code is stored on media (non-removable or removable magnetic and or optical media, or non-volatile random access memory media).
- modern programming languages such as C and C++.
- Such languages are programmatically compiled into assembly language or machine instruction code and are later executed directly on the system's central processing unit.
- a computing system 10 of any kind whether a general purpose computer 6 (see FIG. 1) or an appliance device with computing capability and components (such as a DVD or CD player) is commonly used to consume, execute, display or otherwise utilize digital content.
- Digital content 7 (including but not limited to the above examples) is made available to the system by a variety of means including by network transmission (internet or intranet), on hard media, on non- volatile random access memory removable storage (such as the compact flash standard for removable media storage cards); and is read from that media 7 into the system's memory 8.
- network transmission internet or intranet
- non- volatile random access memory removable storage such as the compact flash standard for removable media storage cards
- stream may be used interchangeably with the term “file” to represent a collection of bits that represent some form of digital content, including not limited to standard file types found on operating systems such as Windows and archive or container formats used to convey content on the internet such as "ZIP” files or "TAR” files.
- an interleaved- multiplexed data hiding process 19 (optionally, also, an excellent framework for the application of encryption to the interleaved, multiplexed content) is provided that performs multiple functions detailed in the foregoing paragraphs.
- the system and process ofthe present invention create meaningful (optionally encrypted) data- identifier tags, sometimes referred to as watermarks, for later insertion into content, of any desired size in number of bytes, each of which have an individual variation even when the identifier data is identical for each.
- Data content is first input as shown in step 11.
- Watermarks are defined as composed of a variable number of bits
- the watermark Prior to writing the output stream, the watermark may optionally be encrypted by a key to further enhance its security.
- the encryption key itself can also be optionally encrypted in a similar manner in steps 15 (subdivide into segments) 16 (interleave) and 17 (encrypt), and optionally stored in a known location with the data stream 18.
- the present invention also serves as a means of interleaving N streams of data for purposes far more general, and more broadly useful, than simply watermarking content. It can irrevocably intermix 13 multiple streams 11 of content such that they remain interleaved until utilized by an appropriate component ofthe present invention, as illustrated in FIG. 7, below.
- BOOLEAN CSigGen :GetSig( const BYTE*const inp_bld, // sig data const unsigned int in_cbld, // length of sig data
- ⁇ iTotal + (unsigned int)(inp_bld[ii + in_sigToggle*cbld]);
- the output itself maybe encrypted as in FIG. 3, steps 14, 15, 16 to further protect its contents.
- the aggregate stream is optionally encrypted, and then the keys necessary to decrypt this stream, if encrypted, are themselves encrypted and hidden; the manner ofthe hiding process maybe as described in FIG. 8, examples 42, 43, 44 or 45, described in detail below, or the key may be hidden in another location known to the system as needed.
- This aggregate multiplexed stream now fifteen megabytes in size maybe written 18 at this time.
- One embodiment ofthe writing process 18 streams the contents back into the original files A, B and C (see FIG. 6 and corresponding description) from where they came, without regard for which contents came from which files, such that the first five megabytes ofthe fifteen megabyte stream is used to fill A.txt, the second five megabytes is used to fill B.wav, and the third five megabytes is used to fill C.doc.
- the method used to determine where to write, to keep track of where the data was written, and to record the manner in which it was interleaved, is detailed below with reference to FIG. 6.
- the present invention supports multiple techniques for providing that the data may be later read and de-interleaved properly (see FIG. 7, below).
- FIG. 7 40 Note that the concept of a map of locations and interleaved data information as detailed in FIG. 7 40 is optional for purposes of this aspect ofthe present invention.
- the map can be incorporated into the stored, hidden content, or as an alternative embodiment ofthe invention, algorithmic logic identical to that described below in FIG.
- CmapLocation::WriteFile is a code example ofthe logic used to create such a map file of locations.
- Raw maps are built upon a linked list structure of locations and lengths and also contain detailed information about the file this mapped area was derived from.
- Location maps are a further abstraction, and are built upon linked lists of raw map lists, where each location map entry contains information to locate a certain number of data bytes. In the example code below, this value is 16 bytes to support the example encryption method, which is optimized for 16 bit units of data. So in the foregoing example, the location map is created from the raw map by partitioning it into 16 byte blocks. These 16 byte blocks need not be contiguous.
- code examples embody another aspect of this invention; namely, a file locker, a mechanism as described below with reference to FIG. 8 and touched upon in FIG. 3 steps 15, 16, 17.
- the file locker serves to securely marry the decryption key to an encrypted stream such that the process described in FIG. 7 can successfully unlock the data and decrypt it.
- the file locker further encrypts the encryption key using a secondary encryption algorithm, with a known key, and hides the key information within the encrypted stream as described below with reference to FIG. 8.
- the encrypted key may be hidden whole (as in steps 42, 43, and 44 of FIG. 8) or may be further subdivided and hidden in a scattered fashion (as in steps 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, and 50 of FIG 8).
- CMapLocation::WriteFile( const char*const mapFileName ) ⁇ LocationMapList * pos locationMapList;
- fileLocker new CFileLock(fileEncrypt, key, 16, fileLock, majorVersion, minorVersion, "c.Wl.tmp”);
- MapRawList_t * pos m_rawMapList
- WORD stringLength; int i; WORD majorVersion HIWORD(MAP_RAW_VERSION);
- fileLocker new CFileLock(fileEncrypt, key, 16, fileLock, majorVersion, minorVersion, (char *) mapFileName); ⁇ else
- fileLocker new CFileLock(fileEncrypt, key, 16, fileLock, majorVersion, minorVersion, "c: ⁇ r.tmp”); ⁇ while (pos)
- the present invention includes a system and method by which content can be hidden or stored in a variety of locations, both intrafile (within a file) and interfile (between files) and also outside the file system on devices that support extra-files system access (such as ISO-9660 CD discs).
- the map files in the code example above detail how such locations are represented and communicated.
- the extra-file system locations 26, 25 are excellent locations to store content securely, because application programs generally cannot access the raw data and are limited to accessing only those data items that are located within the bounds of the file system 24 as known to the table of contents 23.
- an aspect ofthe present invention is disclosed that is used to hide or store information in secure or non-obvious locations.
- the file system is scanned all the possible locations appropriate for information hiding are determined 27. Desired locations from among all the possible locations 28 are selected the ordering of insertion into these locations 28 is determined.
- the stream of interleaved data, described above with reference to FIG. 3, may optionally be encrypted as desired 29.
- low-level operating system interfaces are accessed and device level access 30 is initialized at a level far below the normal file system interfaces, such that the device may optionally be addressed in any and all valid raw physical locations, whether inside or outside the standard file system.
- the aggregate stream is written across the target locations in the order chosen in step 28. An optional map of these target locations may be produced for later access by other aspects ofthe present invention that may not contain the algorithmic knowledge to determine those locations without such a map.
- FIG. 7 is a flow diagram illustrating a method by which the hidden, stored content is retrieved, for example information previously hidden in secure or non- obvious locations as shown in FIG. 6.
- the information is retrieved and reassembled into its original form and provided as needed to other system components.
- Low-level operating system interfaces are accessed, and device level access is initialized 34 at a level far below the normal file system interfaces, such that the device may be addressed in any and all valid raw physical locations, whether inside or outside the standard file system.
- the map or map information obtained above at step 33 is used to determine the ordering or reading and the read locations, and these locations are read in order 35.
- the items read are concatenated in the order read to re-create the original multiplexed interleaved stream. If decrypted previously, the decryption key is read, either from the map 33 or from a predetermined location which may be at the beginning ofthe encrypted stream 43 (see FIG.
- the stream is de-multiplexed into its component original streams 38.
- Each component stream is subdivided into a number of segments of a predetermined number of bits in length and each segment is then de-interleaved 39 into its original component input stream.
- Each such stream is then written to the file system 40 or otherwise provided to the system.
- Intrafile space 20 or space within the bounds of a file, is space that is usually specified as "unused” or “reserved for future use” in the specifications for the file or stream types.
- the following list of published specifications represent a sampling of those researched to determine space utilization within various types of files:
- the present invention embodies a set of programmatic rules that represent techniques for placing data within all the known safe locations (see FIG. 6, step 27) to store protected (interleaved and/or multiplexed and/or encrypted) data in all tested file types, and once hidden, the present invention provides a similar inverse set of capabilities (see FIG. 7) that provide mechanisms to find the hidden information (see steps 33 34 35), extract it (see steps 36 37 38 39) and provide the decrypted, de-interleaved data to the requestor at step 40 of FIG. 7.
- the following code example illustrates an embodiment ofthe invention described above and the programmatic rules illustrated above and with reference to FIG. 6.
- Each type of file for instance text files, jpeg photographs, GIF web images, executable "exe” or PE files, any and all types of files known to the operating system
- the code example below shows the logic used to determine the available free space within a given file.
- One ofthe parameters is a call-back process (writeMapLocation) which creates a list of available locations in the form of a map structure (sometimes called a "raw" map).
- the second parameter is the current MapRawList to which the informative list is to be written.
- the method used to determine the byte locations to pass to writeMapLocation varies for each file type (BMP, EXE, etc).
- CBMPFile :GetMapLocations( void (*writeMapLocation) (unsigned long, unsigned long, bool, bool, bool, MapRawList_t **),
- ISNONZEROFLAG; if (isAlwaysFindable) flags
- ISALWAYSFINDABLEFLAG; if (islnsideFile) flags
- ISINSIDEFILEFLAG;
- translocation content is placed in various locations and then protected using a technique referred to as translocation, a process that is described in further detail below.
- information may be executable content such as a Windows program, for example notepad.exe, or may take the form of other content, for example, a text file, a movie, or an audio file or music.
- the file system consists of storage space on one or more devices and a table of contents or directory that provides locations and offsets.
- content may be placed as follows in whole or in part, since hiding even part of complex content may render the remainder useless, such that the first 25% of a given content type can be hidden and the remainder is made secure by the lack ofthe hidden part, even though the remainder is accessible.
- content may be placed within the file system 65 but hidden between the files 56 in space, for example, that is created by the fragmentation of predetermined storage blocks on the storage media such that the files visible in the file system do not entirely occupy the space allocated for them.
- Such content is placed in unused between-file fragmentation space within the bounds ofthe file system 56 such that its location is unknown to the table of contents
- Such content may be placed outside the file system entirely 59.
- the amount of contiguous available space is larger and thus such a file may be placed in contiguous locations, however note that such a file may in fact still be subdivided and placed into multiple disordered discontiguous locations for added security even in the abundant contiguous space in such extra-file system 59 locations.
- the content is placed partly between the files within the file system 62, and partly in space outside the file system, namely the extra-file system 63.
- this location is actually a series of noncontiguous smaller locations that the content is subdivided into, between files ofthe file system in the space created when file system blocks are fragmented due to partial usage. These blocks, when used, are marked in the file system's records so they will not be inadvertently overwritten or re-used, but they do not have a corresponding entry in the directory system so they are not accessible from the standard file system interfaces.
- the former location 55 is populated with a file whose attributes are identical with the protected content in terms of name, size, external appearance, but whose behavior or contents differ as desired (in the above example, ProcDump is replaced with a stub that exits).
- the translocation system can at any time retrieve the actual contents from the new location 56 and either repopulate them into the former location 55 or provide them as needed to the other components ofthe present invention.
- the locations that are populated with the translocated content are either outside the file system entirely 66, or, in the case of example 67, partly within the fragmented between-file space and partly outside the file system.
- the original file is not moved at all 55 but rather the translocation replacement file is placed into the new location 56, and the file system's pointers 57 are temporarily updated to point to the translocated replacement file.
- locations outside the bounds of the file system may be on the same media as the file system or on entirely different media , for example, random access memory, rewriteable storage, network storage, or any other viable storage medium accessible to the system.
- FIG. 10 An example process used to create a translocation replacement file is now detailed with reference to FIG. 10.
- the original file is "ProcDump.exe” and the translocation replacement is "stub.exe” which does nothing other than exit (of course any file of any type may be replaced by any other file ofthe same or different type, as desired) 75.
- the ProcDump file is first scanned and its attributes recorded; any icons or other resources are copied and duplicated 68.
- the ProcDump file is copied at step 69 to various predetermined storage locations, for example locations 56, 69, 62, and 63 of FIG. 9.
- the original contents of ProcDump are zero-filled 70 and deleted in entirety 71 from the media, while bypassing the file system so that the directory entry and pointers remain intact.
- the original location is used as the location and bounds for the translocation container 72, and this container is then populated with the icons 73 and other attributes 74 ofthe original "ProcDump.exe”, and the container is then populated with the logic and contents of "stub.exe”.
- any attempt by an unauthorized individual to execute "ProcDump.exe” results instead in the execution ofstub.exe", and this persists even if the file known as "ProcDump.exe” is copied elsewhere, since the content has been replaced at a physical level.
- translocation is defined as the ability to provide ubiquitous redirection, which may be used for both the hiding of information, and for the purpose of defending against attacks by disabling the opponent's access to the necessary reverse engineering tools.
- Translocation may be embodied in a system that actually moves content, or in a system that redirects access to content without moving it.
- an individual's intent on reverse engineering a protected system may wish to run the Visual C++ development tools to attempt to debug the running system.
- the protective system is invoked, among the first things it does is translocate all threatening tools it finds, such that Visual C++ is moved from its old location 55 to a new location 56 (see FIG. 9), and the contents of location 55 are replaced with an executable that does nothing but exit when run.
- the executable file for Visual C++ the file that is actually run is this stub executable that does nothing useful.
- translocation that redirects without moving content is similar.
- a mechanism employs a connection to the operating system interfaces 137 for, in this case, file access, and when an attempt is made to run Visual C++ at location 55 (see FIG. 9), the call is monitored and intercepted at steps 138, 139, and the executable file that is actually run 140 is the replacement stub file 56.
- This replacement stub file can do far more than just exit; an example is an embodiment of this invention in which the replacement file is a crippled version of the desired target file 55. In order to further obscure what is happening, care is taken in this example that when the replacement or redirected file is invoked (for example FIG.
- the translocated content is stored in the fashion that an M-bit watermark 12 is stored 31, across multiple M-bit locations with no regard for contiguity, and later accessed by means ofthe methods described above in association with FIG. 7.
- translocated content leaves no obvious clues; the process used to create 73 these substitute or redirected files as in the example FIG. 10 insure that the replacements have all the proper attributes, through steps 68 and 74, including all icons, size and date attributes, and all other properties ofthe original.
- the above example was related to an executable program file, but there are other embodiments of this invention.
- the content is audio, and when invoked in the process of FIG. 11, the act of execution causes the concurrent invocation 76 of an appropriate audio player/helper application 79.
- the content type is a digital video stream, a popular movie title.
- the execution environment 79 when invoked 76, is a digital video player helper application. All digital content types are therefore supported by this aspect ofthe invention.
- FIGs. 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 Another embodiment of this invention as exemplified in FIGs. 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.
- This embodiment relates to a set of mechanisms that operate to tokenize and obfuscate (see step 83 of FIG. 12, reference 88 of FIG. 13 and step 92 of FIG. 14) content of all types (see step 98 of FIG. 16, below) in order to eliminate trivial observational analysis, and in the case of executable content, to greatly increase the difficulty of unauthorized debugging.
- This embodiment also serves to prohibit the modification of all types of content, since the tokenized obfuscated content 89 cannot be modified using standard editing/modification methods due to its proprietary tokenized formatting. In the case of executable content, disassembly is also prohibited by this process since the resultant output 84, 89 is no longer standard assembly language.
- digital content 82 maybe tokenized according to any of a number of standard tokenization mechanisms 83, and the resulting tokenized content 84 is stored (see FIG 13, step 89).
- the stored tokenized content 93 can be later be retrieved and subsequently reconstituted and executed 94, provided an execution output 95 that is the same as that which is originally intended.
- the stream of digital content to be tokenized and obfuscated 82 (see FIG. 12) is presented.
- the digital content is read and its type is determined 86.
- the system and method ofthe present invention preferably recognizes all existent digital content/file/stream types; in the case of this example the file type is determined to be an executable or Windows "PE" file conformant with the specifications found in "Peering Inside the PE: A Tour ofthe Win32 Portable Executable File Format", Matt Pietrek, March 1994.
- the content is parsed 87, with a lexical parser similar to those found in many compiler front-end mechanisms.
- Portions ofthe content are replaced with tokens 88 that bear an appropriate lexical relationship 91, understood to the mechanisms of this invention, to the content and the context.
- the token replacement may be fixed; for example the assembly language MUL or multiply operator is replaced with the token ⁇ .
- the token replacement may be variable, for example based on location, such that the MUL operator's token is ⁇ if it occurs in the first 50 lines of assembly code, otherwise it is #.
- FIG. 14 Details related to the substitution of tokens are provided at FIG. 14.
- the content is parsed at step 90, as described above in FIG. 13, step 87. Lexical boundaries ofthe parsed content are identified 91, and the replacement is performed.
- the tokenized content is written out 89, and may then be interleaved, multiplexed, encrypted, and/or hidden as illustrated in the previous examples described above.
- the tokenized content 93 is located and extracted at step 97 (if it was indeed interleaved, multiplexed, encrypted, and/or hidden as described above).
- the content type is determined at step 98, and the tokens are parsed and converted back into standard executable code 99.
- the content may then be re-obfuscated 100 by applying known variations on standard assembly language which serve to confuse debugging and disassembly tools. It may then be executed in an appropriate execution context 101; in the case of executable "PE" program code, that context is the operating system itself to be executed 102 upon the processor 5 (see FIG. 1).
- this invention replaces standard assembly language elements with permuted assembly language which has attributes that cause disassembly utilities such as, for example, the popular disassembly tool IDA Pro, sold and distributed by the Belgian firm DataRescue.
- disassembly utilities such as, for example, the popular disassembly tool IDA Pro, sold and distributed by the Belgian firm DataRescue.
- Such tools depend on assembly language being formed and structured in specific standard ways; the enhanced assembly language generated by this invention offers the same logical function as the code it replaces but is resistant to disassembly as shown in the example code illustrations below.
- this embodiment changes instances of "jumps" to (push and return) calls:
- the inventive system and method after having tokenized and obfuscated the content and optionally interleaved, multiplexed, encrypted, and/or hidden it, later, as needed, when it is time to execute this content, the content is located and extracted (if it was indeed interleaved, multiplexed, encrypted, and/or hidden), parsed, content type determined, the tokens are parsed and execution occurs in lockstep with the conversion to executable content so the reconstituted content is never written to a file or provided to any entity in the system, but is rather executed on the fly within a custom execution context 101 (see FIG. 16) or custom interpreter 101.
- content may be any digital content; executable program code, audio, video, digital documents, and the "execution content” is constructed to execute the content.
- execution content varies depending on the content; for example audio or video would be executed on an appropriate audio or video player, documents presented in an appropriate viewer, application programs and games run.
- An embodiment of this invention may generate for example instances ofthe variant assembly language as illustrated in the example above, and thereby be resistant to disassembly, and may also be made more difficult to debug by defeating automatic disassembly tools using obfuscated assembly language programming techniques, for example inappropriate not-used jumps into the middle of instructions. Such obfuscation, or similarly effective methods accomplished by other means, enhance the security ofthe invention.
- the interpreter operates as a shield from debugging and reverse-engineering tools.
- the interpreter serves as a layer of abstraction between the protective invention and the real operating system. The values found in system memory and registers will not be directly related to the logical flow ofthe interpreted program; they will show the debug state ofthe interpreter itself instead, and that will make assembly language debugging very difficult.
- a protective system for digital content, or any running software application or system of any kind on any platform is itself protected from being debugged, monitored, logged and understood by an invention mechanism which creates carefully targeted and tuned system activity, or "saturation" activity.
- This activity causes an instrumented or debug-enabled computer system to generate large volumes of debug, log, and/or monitor-tool traffic unrelated to the protective logic. For example such traffic can make a log that would have been 15 kilobytes grow to be 150 megabytes. Monitoring/logging/data watching debug techniques are easily overwhelmed by this approach.
- One example of such a logging monitoring tool and it's usage is Filemon, an excellent freeware tool which logs system file activity. When exposed to the saturation traffic 110, the Filemon event log can grow to be orders of magnitude larger than it would otherwise be. Events of interest to one debugging or reverse engineering the system are therefore lost in the process.
- This targeted saturation embodiment ofthe present invention operates as follows.
- the protection by saturation of a system or application first depends on understanding the nature ofthe normal system traffic generated by that application. Therefore, with reference to FIG. 17, the protected entity must first be analyzed as in step 107.
- the protected entity is executed on a system that is running the saturation profiler tool 104.
- This tool profiles activity 104 in such ways that classes of activity are monitored (for example SCSI calls or registry calls or file opening) and statistics are gathered (for example, scsi calls logged during the execution of program material to be protected). For example, 400 file opens, 3500 reads of 2048 bytes each, 120 query commands. All aspects of system utilization are monitored and logged and categorized by type and frequency. This forms a profile of activity for the program material.
- This profile is encoded in a fashion readable by a later process of this invention (FIG. 18, described later in this document), and written to a "saturation list", along with a tuning profile 105 with detailed encoded instructions 106.
- These instructions specify the desired traffic types and volumes, for example to mask the SCSI traffic, in one embodiment, the present invention is directed to generate 4000 file opens in similar drive locations and sizes, 30,000 reads, 500 query commands.
- the invention which actually generates the directed saturation traffic may first open the saturation rofile 108, decode the instructions as required, determine which types of traffic are desired (for example network traffic, or as in the example above SCSI traffic), communicate with the appropriate saturation engine (as above, the scsi saturation engine would be used in this example; each such entity may be used individually or in combination, such as for example doing both SCSI and network saturation) 109.
- the saturation engine then executes the required commands 110 and FIG. 19, (see below for details) and generates the appropriate levels of traffic.
- FIG. 19 The functioning of an individual instance of a saturation engine 116 is shown in FIG. 19.
- the SCSI example from above provides an illustration to one skilled in the art; the SCSI interfaces are utilized and an event driven mechanism is created, where the first logical step is to wait on the event of either a command completion or a new external request to issue a command 112.
- a command is pending (a SCSI file open, for example, as the next saturation command in the desired saturation list)
- it is executed 113, and synchronously waited upon if desired 114 with varying next-step results optionally depending on completion status.
- the process executes a hard sleep for a predefined interval if desired (to throttle back activity) 115, and then sleeps again waiting on the events as in 112.
- the throttle-back sleep allows the saturation system to selectively control its utilization of system resources dynamically, for example to avoid monopolizing system resources when they're needed for more important activities.
- the ability to be throttled back is controlled by the process ofthe invention as needed to reduce saturation traffic in specific ways at specific times, and may be overridden programmatically by other invention embodiments within the protective system if they determine they need more resources for any reason.
- All individual saturation engines are controlled by a saturation scheduler as shown in FIG. 20.
- the scheduler opens, decodes, and reads (parses) 117 the saturation profile and system settings directions from the saturation list previously described.
- the necessary saturation engines are polled, 118 launched if not already present, and the engine specific commands (for example SCSI commands as above) are queued to the saturation engine's 123 main scheduling loop.
- the underlying process driving the command queue mechanism is event driven and clock driven, with saturation engine tasks being fed commands at predetermined rates.
- the command feeder process is itself event driven, sleeping and waiting 119 upon the event of commands entering the queue, issuing the command 120 with dynamically controllable command frequency and adding additional sleep time commands to the payload so the saturation engine knows how much additional sleep over and above the event queue events is required (this is the throttling mechanism as described in the paragraphs above), and monitoring the effect on the system to determine if the throttling amount and the command queue depth and speed are appropriate to the task.
- This main scheduling loop 123 would be infinite if not event driven, however since it is event driven (as the individual saturation engine loops are) when the queue of commands is empty, the system is quiescent, suspended, and optionally swapped out. Upon overall completion, the scheduler exits 123 and may optionally kill all the individual saturation engines previously spawned.
- a filter, shim, device driver extension, or substitute device driver is inserted into system interfaces, interposing itself 125 between the original driver or interface and all other entities by stealing inputs directed towards those interfaces, reattaching any previously attached entities to the public "subsumed interfaces", optionally passing through or modifying the traffic to those interfaces, optionally logging traffic, thus subsuming the "public face" of such interfaces.
- An example would be to take over the interface to the system "beep" function. Every time a system "beep" (the annoying noise the PC speaker can make at power up on many Personal Computer systems) is requested, the shim steals the command.
- the beep is passed through, and the system beeps. If the requesting entity is a disallowed entity, like an equally annoying pop-up browser window, the beep may be thrown away and thereby suppressed.
- the vulnerability of such an interface shimming techniques in its simplest form is that another such "imposter" shim intended to compromise such a "protection” shim could be inserted after (or before, or both before AND after it, to allow it to be bypassed entirely at will, depending on the intent) the protection shim, thus obviating the utility of such a mechanism.
- the shim itself can be monitored or subverted if it in turn is shimmed.
- the process as shown in FIG.21 initiates by first finding the system interfaces it intends to subsume and uses the lowest possible level of interface; interface use is performed based on that low level information rather than using higher level abstractions made available by the operating system.
- the interface's external interface functions are subsumed by the shim 125, any commands received while impersonating the interface are optionally either passed through, modified or discarded (the system may desire to do any of those things, for example if authorizing by PID, a read access might be thrown away ofthe requesting PID were believed to be a security threat like a debugger) 126.
- the system could transparently pass all requests through 126 and optionally offer an undocumented other interface so a knowing programmer could access system functions through the shim directly 126, bypassing system interfaces and associated interface monitoring tools.
- the process may optionally sleep between subsumed-interface-commands 127 thereby retarding public interface access, thus providing reduced system resource usage as desired to specific entities on the system as needed (for example to starve a reverse engineering tool and reduce its utility).
- this dynamic-reconnection mechanism ofthe present invention manifests itself as a process that attaches to the first location directly at the interface level, and forces all subsequent shims of any other kind to attach themselves after the invention by continually reattaching in the first position:
- the Attach and reAttach logic keeps the _ Attach at the top of the ShimList.
- such an attach and re-attach strategy is implemented for the purposes of feeding spurious or saturation traffic into an opponent reverse-engineering tool.
- this invention may be used to isolate and defeat certain reverse engineering tools.
- FileMon an excellent reverse engineering tool distributed by Syslnternals.com
- it would effectively monitor all usage ofthe filesystem and record all access in detail. If it were desirable to hide access from such monitoring tools, one such invention use for example would be to isolate FileMon by attaching one shim before it, and one after it, and having each shim continually reattach itself.
- a filter, shim, device driver extension, or substitute device driver is inserted into system interfaces in this case, interposing itself at step 131 between the reverse engineering monitoring shim and the rest of the system, thus apparently subsuming the role ofthe operating system interface and providing false and misleading data 132 to the monitoring/reverse-engineering shim/tool.
- the vulnerability of all such interface shimming techniques in their simplest form is that another such shim intended to compromise such a shim could be inserted after (or before, or both, depending on the intent) this process at any time, thus obviating the utility of such a mechanism.
- this embodiment ofthe invention includes a re-attachment mechanism 134 which guarantees a specific attachment location, in this case directly before the opponent reverse- engineering/monitoring shim, as specified by the invention's user. This is accomplished by repeated automated re-insertions 135 into the interface chain. Such reinsertions are done in a fashion that does not impede function by waiting a number of time units 133 between issued instructions. Thus this embodiment of continual- interface-reattachment can eliminate the threat of device redirection and monitoring tools being used to subvert the system. h another embodiment ofthe present invention, as illustrated in FIG.
- code example below illustrates the invention discussed above in conjunction with FIG. 23; in this case the code example is the do-nothing stub executable that replaces access to the disallowed executable(s).
- a protective entity is created; such entity operates as an independent protective agent and secures all protected content from unauthorized access.
- this entity referred to as an "assassin”
- this entity may be programmed to have multiple functions.
- the assassin upon initialization 144 first determines how many other assassins and other protected entities are present 145.
- System authorization functions are utilized 146 as depicted in FIG. 25, FIG. 26 to establish the correct identity of all processes on the system at all times.
- the assassin scans the system for the presence and execution of threat-entity-instances, such as debug tools like ProcDump and FileMon and even developer tools like Microsoft's Visial C++ 147.
- a first embodiment ofthe assassin process determines the identity of another assassin process (this is a two-assassin example) and instances 146, and monitors them for exit conditions 148. Upon an exit condition, this embodiment attempts to kill other assassin processes and then kills itself 150.
- this embodiment has proven that two assassin process identifiers were specified. This means that the currently executing entity is the first assassin launched.
- the monitored identifiers will therefore be that ofthe second assassin entity and the application entity (target).
- This embodiment will wait for either one to exit; and assumes the target entity will exit when it is finished, in which case the first assassin entity can clean up and itself exit. If, on the other hand, it is the assassin entity that exits, this means that someone or something (a debug process perhaps) has killed it, so the first assassin entity will attempt to terminate the target entity and then delete all the instances of other system entities that it can.
- ahProc[1] OpenEntity(ENTITY_ALL_ACCESS, FALSE, in_dwldentWaitProc2);
- FIG. 25 establishing such an authorization context and enforcing it involves a series of steps as outlined below.
- One simple way to illustrate this process is by representing the authorized versus unauthorized entities as "friend or foe", in the form of a list 156.
- a snapshot of all entities on the system is taken 153 and such a list is established 155. Any entities created subsequently, such as descendant children/entities ofthe original list entries, are appropriately added to the list 154.
- the accessing entity is identified 158 and identity information is compared with the list 159 to determine whether the accessing process is a friend or foe. Access, or denial of access, is issued accordingly 160.
- the code example below illustrates mechanisms utilized to verify the identity of an entity and make a decision as to allowing or disallowing access to the entity.
- any or all ofthe above aspects of the invention as illustrated and described above are incorporated into an application, or set of applications, and associated documentation, which are engineered to provide the aforementioned capabilities to digital content creation professionals and other such users.
- digital content that a user desires to protect is provided to an appropriate toolkit as input and the techniques detailed above are applied to the content.
- the user is not necessarily exposed to the inner operation ofthe above processes, nor ofthe applied inventive techniques.
- the output of such a toolkit is a protected digital content entity.
- All types of content are supported and are equally applicable to the principles on the invention, including; audio, video, executable, images, text, documents, e-books, and all other digital content of all types on all platforms as described above.
- the user of this toolkit may choose to include or exclude any ofthe inventive components mentioned above as part ofthe configuration of the tool, but at no time is it necessary for the user to understand in any detail how each component works, or how the individual components ofthe system interact.
- the invention is directed to methods that allow for the electronic delivery of digital content in a fashion that prohibits content modification and duplication by unauthorized persons.
- the mechanisms detailed herein enable, support and secure the delivery of all forms of electronic content software titles, audio, video, and text/graphic/e-book/e-presentation formats using both hard media and network content delivery models.
- the product's files are modified, both before an electronic download while the product still resides on the server (or before being copied to the server), and the application files are also modified in the product directory following installation on the customer computer.
- Hidden data is inserted into these product files, this hidden data incorporating among other identifying data a securely encrypted transaction ID, which may also be modified by a function based on information about the target system's component-specific configuration information.
- the hidden data may alternately or inclusively comprise a simple numeric index or may also have meaningful content interleaved into itself, as described above in connection with FIG 13.
- the data may be of any length.
- One such model is an entirely local model where the digital content may be installed or used from locally read hard media.
- Another such model is a network model in which there is a series of network transactions.
- the foregoing may describe a "target Computing System or Device” (the client, in other words) and a “Remote Server” (the server).
- the server may in fact comprise multiple server machines, each performing a set of either unique or redundant functions.
- a good example, detailed elsewhere, is the generation of a system ID based on the configuration ofthe target system or client.
- this ID value be converted into a usable encryption/decryption key (either symmetric or asymmetric in function).
- this key generation algorithm were on the client system it might be possible to reverse engineer it and compromise it, and thereby compromise the system.
- it By having it be remote on the server in some embodiments ofthe invention, it effectively becomes a "black box" whose output may of course be intercepted and examined under some circumstances, but whose inner workings cannot be exposed by debugging, disassembly or other compromise ofthe client system, thus rendering the invention more secure under these circumstances.
- This client-server utilization of distributed service functions is optimal when possible but may not always be appropriate, as in the case of a CD or other hard media installation or usage of digital content where there is no network connection.
- This model is a good compromise whenever possible because it allows certain key algorithm elements to be remote and therefore not susceptible to being attacked by local debug means, and the usage of it requires that the content creator be willing to make an active network connection of some kind (whether broadband, dial-up, or other) a requirement for usage of their content.
- This set of decisions is entirely a business model based decision, not one limited by technical means. This invention offers optimum flexibility for all such business decisions, local, remote, or hybrid.
- content is processed and prepared for distribution in the form of a download archive 162, in part using and combining any ofthe mechanisms illustrated above in connection with FIGs. 3 through 26.
- the archive is stored, for example at a server, in preparation for a download by a remote user 163.
- a software or firmware component or tool (embodying technology detailed in FIGs. 3 - 8 above) is deployed to the computing device or system on which the user desires to install or use the desired content (hereinafter referred to the "Target System” or "Computing Device”) and is run.
- the execution of this tool causes the system's component makeup to be analyzed and examined, and a unique identifying value is generated that represents the examined totality ofthe system 164.
- Each ofthe system's components are examined 165 as desired and selected aspects of each component's properties are considered in producing a unique identifying value for the system 166.
- generation ofthe identifying value may represent a consideration of component properties information such as the manufacturer, and/or the firmware revision, and/or the serial number, and/or other directly measurable physical properties such as performance, or amount of memory or other storage, or other enumerable hardware features 173 that are aggregated 174 (see FIG.
- the System ID value maybe transferred 168 either to a remote server, a locally executing runtime process, or a locally executing installation process, and further manipulated as shown 5 in FIG. 31 as it is used in conjunction with the Transaction ED 176 and then interleaved and encrypted 177, for example according to the techniques described above with reference to FIGs. 3 through 8.
- This information is hidden within the content 178 as part ofthe delivery and optionally any installation process.
- FIG. 28 is inserted into the archive ofthe desired digital content product.
- This occurs on a remote server, usually, but may also occur locally in an installation from CD or other hard media.
- the remote case is inherently more secure but either case provides an archive with hidden identifying or watermark data, which is hidden and inserted as described in FIG. 31 as in FIGs. 3 - 8.
- the identifying watermark data is
- the archive 169 is encrypted and interleaved and hidden in the archive 169.
- the entire archive either as one monolithic file or as a collection of smaller files (segmented for faster download performance, more reliable resumption of download, and other network performance and robustness concerns) is encrypted using a key that is made unique for the target computing device system 170 such that is can only be decrypted appropriately on the 0 same system as it was packaged for, as that decryption process will begin with the determination ofthe system ID ofthe target as in FIG. 28.
- the archive is transferred to the target system 171; in the case of a network transaction it is transmitted from the remote server to the target system, while in the case of a local installation, the archived data is provided to the installation process immediately.
- the recipient ofthe 5 encrypted archive must of course have the appropriate key with which to decrypt it, and the present invention offers two strategies for providing that key.
- the recipient process can synthesize its own decryption key as described in FIG. 28 step 167, or can be provided by the remote system or other local process after it consumes the identifying data as provided by FIG. 28 and itself converts it into an appropriate key.
- the components of a digital content product are processed and packaged, for example the standard component contents of a hard media digital product, including executable files, documentation files, image files, and audio files.
- a standard hard media product may be taken in entirety from a CD release and modified 162 into a more secure downloadable product 163.
- Some or all ofthe content may include hidden identifying data inserted into it as shown above with reference to FIG. 31. This hidden identifying data, may optionally contain serialized purchase information related to the individual purchaser at which the
- Target Computing device is instrumented (step 164 of FIG. 28) and then examined (step 165 of FIG. 28) and a system identifier is created (step 166 of FIG. 28) by examining selected elements ofthe Target Computing device are identified uniquely and transformed into a unique identifying watermark for later use (steps 173-175 of FIG. 30).
- these watermarks or hidden data items may be created (the concepts described above in FIGs. 3 through 8 above can also be referred for mechanisms used in the creation, hiding, and later extraction of these data items) may be created using multiple virtual streams as described above, in which, in this example, one such stream 209 represents System ID information containing unique identifying information pertaining to the system, and another such stream contains transaction specific 210 (for example identifiably serialized) information generated by the server at the time of first authentication or download. These streams are interleaved and encrypted 211 (as shown above in FIG. 3).
- This concept can be used in an Electronic or Network distribution model, and may also be used in a hard media distribution model if the model allows for the Target Computing Device to be at least temporarily connected to a network.
- a mechanism ofthe invention authorizes the execution of product components (also referred to as Content) by providing a service that correlates attributes ofthe executable product with the system that is the target ofthe execution ofthe product.
- product components also referred to as Content
- ESD Electronic Software Distribution
- the ESD content delivery phase may be authenticated by means of purchase (or other) unique transaction-specific information and/or system specific information.
- kit components are packaged as large archives or stored as raw data (in the same form as a hard media kit, including optionally, directory structures) and then manufactured on-demand, per-user, per purchase.
- the final kit is packaged as a collection of encrypted archives, or as a single monolithic archive, securely encrypted, and made usable or installable at the appropriate time by a secure product execution process.
- This process employs many ofthe techniques detailed above with reference to FIGs. 3 - 26, and is further strengthened by the client-server authentication process detailed in FIG. 32.
- a component capable of determining the unique identifying data is deployed to the Target Computing device.
- the deployed component finds hidden locations ( as in FIGs. 3 through 8 above) within the content or elsewhere on the computing device 179.
- the identifying data is extracted, it is sent via network connection to the server 180 where it is, turning to FIG. 33, received 182, de-interleaved and decrypted 183 (also as in parent filing FIG. 3 through FIG.
- the response is read from the server 181, the response being a necessary component to allow for the successful execution ofthe protected content on the Target Computing Device as discussed in the foregoing.
- installation or re-installation may be disallowed at any time by the process illustrated in FIG. 33, in that the server can make authentication decisions based on certain criteria in addition to the overall validity ofthe system ID and transaction ID information, for instance total number of authentications or re-authentications, or the frequency of these events, or other information, can cause the server to choose not to authenticate in the verification step
- the response data provided can indicate a system decision to generate a Boolean (i.e. "yes” or “no") state of failure, and/or can contain executable code instructions interleaved with other data (as in parent filing FIG. 3 through FIG. 8) which, when transmitted at step 186, will cause the recipient process on the Target Computing device to exit, or to incorrectly decrypt the content and then exit upon a failed content execution sequence.
- server based authentication decisions are also influenced by subsequent transactions in which the user performs a customer service re-authentication either by phone (verbally) or via the network.
- Such remote authentication/re-authentication invention methods may be executed within hard media based products as well.
- a mechanism of the invention processes product files in order to make room for larger quantities of hidden data. These additional spaces for hidden data item are integrated directly into any desired product files and are optionally pre-filled with filler content that matches the surrounding data to render them difficult to locate.
- This process modifies each desired product or content file as follows with reference to FIG. 34. Each desired file is opened and its filesystem allocation is increased by some amount 187. Internal structure (as required per filetype) and allocation pointers are modified to match the increased allocation 188. File contents may be moved within the file as needed 189 as well. All of this available space may optionally be mapped 190, the map hidden, and then later used by another process as described above with reference to FIGs. 4 - 8.
- the process of the present invention may optionally segment the contents of the download kit such that specific small and critical files or even portions of such files are segregated from the main kit.
- the downloaded installation kit is therefore incomplete in small but critical ways.
- the installation process requires subsequent authenticated reconnections to the download host, followed by small and volatile downloads of these critical items.
- this mechanism segments the contents of the installed digital product such that specific critical files and/or portions of such files are segregated and encrypted in a fashion that makes the installed product function properly only on the intended target system.
- the process of this invention may intentionally leave incomplete certain chosen program elements, the elements to be completed by means of executable information extracted from an authorization process, in some cases by hiding the information within the authentication response.
- the authorization process can provide the system with both numerical encrypted information (keys for further system decryption use) and executable content critical to task completion.
- content may have certain sections altered such that key elements are removed and hidden elsewhere in secret locations, for example on the media itself in the case of hard media, on the network in other cases, on other system storage devices in the case for a component already installed on a computer system. Execution requires that these hidden elements are found and replaced in their original locations within the content. These elements are stored in locations that would not be copied easily with either the installer media or the installed product directory. In a detailed view of such a process, as in FIG.
- a list of files requiring protection is assembled 191 and each file in turn is processed 192 in that the contents are parsed and certain sections (such as starting point, duration) are identified as critical either by manual selection, or by a file-type and context-aware algorithm (such as a parser or compiler front-end modified for this task), or by a simpler method such as for example by choosing every Nth section M bytes long.
- Each section is copied to an archive and stored 195 (where it is optionally interleaved and encrypted as described above).
- Each such section can be identified on an optional map (as per FIGs.
- the authentication process for this concept in circumstances that allow the use of a network connection and remote server or servers to assist in the authentication, as each such damaged or modified or incomplete file is read, either as part of a staging process or during the runtime process ofthe digital content product, access to the specific section ofthe protected file is redirected through the translocation process as described above with reference to FIGs.
- the blocking protective entity provides a remote server with a system ID 197, using the methods described in FIGs 29 and 30, or extracts the hidden system ID using the methods described in FIGs. 3 - 8, and a request for the missing data item.
- the remote system or server receives the request and validates the authenticity ofthe request as described above with reference to FIG.
- the response data is generated on the server and provided back to the authentication process on the Target Computing System, where it is de-interleaved and decrypted 198 (as in FIGs. 3 -
- This response data may contain Boolean flag data indicating the success or failure state ofthe authentication, and if the authentication fails, the consumption of this protected content can be caused to abort, either immediately, or in a deferred, indirect fashion (see discussion of exit-related processes as disclosed above with reference to FIG. 24, and in FIGs. 44 - 49 below).
- this process also supports more robust methods for example using the interleaved streams ofthe response data format to transmit the missing, archived content.
- One mechanism is the inclusion within the response data of executable data (not from the archive but rather as response to a failed authentication) which causes an exit, an error condition, or which causes communication to another system entity which itself begins a cascading exit process.
- the authentication process on the Target Computer System next optionally de-interleaves and decrypts the response data (according to the processes of FIGs. 3 - 8, above) and optionally uses the map data 199 to confirm placement ofthe data and to optionally determine the next location(s) to block on for subsequent reads.
- the authorization process then substitutes the filler data (as in FIG. 35 194) with the executable data 200. This may be done as a one-time fix-up of data during an execution, or may optionally be immediately overwritten after use with more filler data, by means of an event driven synchronized process, such that the corrected data is provided in a volatile, just-in-time fashion for a brief window of time. Access to the data item is then permitted by the system 201.
- This invention can also be embodied within a variation ofthe mechanism described above.
- authentication can also be performed locally without benefit of a network connection to a server or remote authenticating entity.
- the target is one ofthe files that had previously been processed as in FIG. 35 above, and a location within that file is touched (this location's filler nature is determined by means of either a Map file 204 as described above in FIGs. 3 - 8, or directly by algorithmic means) that had previously been copied to an archive 192 and replaced with filler data 194, the attempt to read this filler data is asynchronously blocked 202, the appropriate System ID information is generated or retrieved 203
- the archived data necessary to fill in that allocation is located (see FIGs. 3 - 8) 205 and its target location is correlated with the map 206.
- the archived data is copied the target location, either as a one- time fix-up of that location, or in a just-in-time fashion where it is replaced with filler data immediately after use by the reading process 207.
- the read is unblocked 208 and the data is then capable of being read in its new, corrected form.
- a mechanism of this invention in which there are methods that can detect and discover the presence of classes and instances of software whose effects maybe of a compromising nature to the secure system.
- Such tools whose discovery is desired include those used for software development (known variously as ICES, Debuggers, dump/lift tools, process fixup tools, any and all executing entities on the system at any level of privilege) and which discovery initiates defensive responses (exit, kill intrusion process, etc) when invoked on a system that has been thus instrumented for hacker purposes.
- FIG. 39 a list of sample patterns is arrived at by examining the in-memory patterns of storage ofthe tools listed above. Small segments of memory are copied that bear unique information about the target applications and entities. Later, on the target computing device, a protective program is invoked and this list is loaded 212, and the system's memory bounds are determined 213, for example for all physical and virtual memory, Random Access Memory and other memory including NNRAM, Flash RAM and Virtual Memory Files on read/write media. A starting point within this memory is selected and an ordering for subsequent reads is determined 214. Memory ranges are read into a buffer 215, compared with each item in the list 216, and upon a match an action is taken (such defensive actions as outlined above in FIG.
- fMemoryRead ReadProcessMemory(hProc, (void *)pMemBase, byBuf, BUFSIZE + MAXLENGTH - 1 ,
- ⁇ s_pMemBaseStart[ringPosition] (BYTE * ) 0x400000; ⁇
- ⁇ dwRes 1 0x00001020; break; ⁇
- ⁇ pDdb (DDB *)pDdb->DDB_Next;
- ⁇ AddressCheck (DWORD)(&(AddressSegment[ii])) + 10 - 1;
- FIG. 40 is a flow diagram of a process in accordance with the present invention in which the system determines whether the environment is safe (criteria include absence of some or all software development tools and emulation environments), and then allows the protected title to run.
- the system's devices are enumerated 220 and the related properties are examined in detail 221 and converted into meaningful numeric values (as well as measurable device performance metrics being converted to similarly meaningful numeric values).
- These device specific data items are compared to known data for such devices 222 and emulation of devices, wherever possible, is discerned.
- a set of defensive responses are engaged 223, including those detailed in FIG. 24 above and
- FIGs. 44 - 49 below.
- system memory is searched and mapped and the signature of the section of memory used to handle keyboard operations 224 is found, and certain key definitions within that memory space are found 225 (such as hotkeys which may need to be disabled in order to prevent the foreground invocation of certain debug and software development tools) and are altered so that during the time period that the digital content protective system is 225 is running, the desired keystrokes can be suppressed 226.
- certain key definitions within that memory space are found 225 (such as hotkeys which may need to be disabled in order to prevent the foreground invocation of certain debug and software development tools) and are altered so that during the time period that the digital content protective system is 225 is running, the desired keystrokes can be suppressed 226.
- ⁇ posMin (DWORD)kbd_driverSegStart;
- FIG. 42 is a flow diagram of a process that controls keyboard access and only allows the keyboard to function as an input device when the target focus for the keyboard is an authorized application or process window.
- the target computing system's operating system and interfaces are determined by means of system calls
- the keyboard driver is located in memory, and all memory locations related to keyboard usage are found.
- the focus ofthe keyboard is determined 228 and the process identification information associated with the target of that focus is determined.
- This process identification information (or PID) is compared with a list of PID information maintained by the system (as in FIGs. 25 and 26 above related to determination of identity and authorization on a process by process basis) 229 and a determination is made as to whether to allow or disallow access 230.
- FIG. 43 is a flow diagram of a process by which mouse button access is controlled to only allows the mouse buttons to function as an input device when the target focus for the mouse is an authorized application or process window.
- the target computing system's operating system and interfaces are determined by means of system calls 231.
- the mouse driver is located in memory, and all memory locations related to mouse button mapping and usage are found.
- the focus ofthe mouse is determined 232 and the process identification information associated with the target of that focus is determined. This process identification information (or
- PID is compared with a list of PID information maintained by the system (as in FIGs. 25 and 26 above, related to determination of identity and authorization on a process by process basis) 233 and a determination is made as to whether to allow or disallow access 234.
- the system in order to defend the system from attack, the system exits upon being compromised or otherwise touched by unauthorized tools or methods. The exit itself may be delayed or deferred to obfuscate the logic behind the exit process.
- Other cooperating components of this invention processes, threads, tasks and other logical algorithmic entitiescan be configured such that if one exits for any reasons all the others exit as well.
- the methods used to determine whether another process has exited include: interprocess communication via standard system synchronization methods; interprocess communication by nonstandard nonobvious synchronization methods including page level memory access using the VM system; page level memory access subverting the VM system by accessing locations physically; implicit exit via polling of a sort; touching areas of memory such that in the event the target process, thread, task or logical construct itself exits, an access violation in the reading process occurs, unhandled, causing it to exit with no decision logic required; event driven exit, where an event occurs that triggers processes to exit; and cross-kill, where the cooperating components ofthe system kill ALL of each other and THEN themselves upon compromise.
- the process ofthe present invention maintains system security by using message passing and overt system analysis to determine whether other system components have been compromised or have exited.
- the exit of any entity is sufficient reason for the rest ofthe system entities to begin exiting in whatever order they determine appropriate. This results in a more or less nondeterministic order of exit for all components, to confuse efforts to understand a cause and effect relationship between actions (such as debugging) and reactions (such as system exit behaviors).
- this is an ongoing task and is actually present in various forms in other system entities as desired. All system entities can participate in this process, making them all part ofthe family of entities referred to as assassin processes above with reference to FIGs. 24 - 26.
- step 235 the system sleeps for a specified interval so as not to check too often for other entity status.
- the sleep duration is a tunable value and may be dynamically altered by the system as desired. Any messages from other entities are read 236 (discussed in detail in FIG. 46 below) and are de-interleaved and decrypted as in FIGs. 3 and 4 above.
- Message content is modified as needed and then re-encrypted and re-interleaved as in FIGs. 3 and 4 and then sent to the next recipient (discussed in FIG. 45 and FIG. 47 below) 237.
- the read or write process indicate the recipient or sending entity has exited, or if a "kill" message is received, or if there is no message waiting after the specified sleep period has ended, this entity can assume the system to be compromised or exiting for other reasons, and itself initiate the exit process.
- the entity may kill the process of one or more peers 238, issue a "kill" message 239, and kill itself after a wait interval determined by a random number generator 240.
- the sleep value is optionally reset according to system tuning inputs as needed 241 and the process begins again 235 at the next interval.
- the process illustrated in FIG. 45 allows for the writing of messaging information between system entities in a non-obvious fashion, without using system message constructs (which would be the first place an intruder would look for such messages).
- the messages maybe interleaved and encrypted as shown in FIGs. 3 and 4 above.
- the memory being used by the intended recipient ofthe message is found and its bounds examined and understood 242. It may or may not be in the memory space ofthe actual recipient and memory belonging to any third process may be used as needed.
- the desired message data values are written to a location within the chosen memory space 243. If no such recipient process identification PID or such associated memory is found, the recipient process is assumed to have been compromised or have exited for some other reason 244.
- the process shown in FIG. 46 allows for the reading of messaging information between system entities in a non-obvious fashion, without using system message constructs (which would be the first place an intruder would look for such messages).
- the messages may be interleaved and encrypted as shown in FIGs. 3 and 4.
- the memory intended to serve as a recipient repository ofthe message is found and its bounds examined and understood 245. It may or may not be in the memory space ofthe actual recipient and memory belonging to any third process may be used as needed.
- the desired message data values are read from the location within the memory space chosen 246. If no such valid new message, or no such associated memory is found, the sending/writing process is assumed to have been compromised or have exited for some other reason 247.
- the process shown in FIG. 47 allows for the passage of messaging information between system entities in a non-obvious fashion, with added security, and still without using system message constructs.
- the messages may be interleaved and encrypted as shown in FIGs. 3 and 4.
- the system page table is modified such that one physical page is referenced by one or more virtual pages 248. All writes are done to memory locations on such associated virtual pages and never done directly to any virtual pages used directly by the protective system 249, so that no debugger watch points set to these virtual pages would be triggered by such writes.
- the page table is further examined on each subsequent write and any exit of any system process is noted; in the event of any such exit being noted, the exited process is assumed to have been compromised or to have exited as part of an intended cascading system exit 250.
- system defense related tasks are encapsulated within other routines commonly used by the system. For example, it can happen that every time a file is open, this action triggers a defensive routine that scans memory or rewrites memory. In this manner, any and all system activities operate as events that trigger defensive routines, so these routines do not necessarily have to poll or loop as their exclusive method of acting upon the system, and so that removal of these defenses is non-trivial as they can be deeply integrated into every aspect ofthe system.
- the digital content protective system functions may be integrated into other system functions inseparably, so that their removal is non-trivial.
- the standard function ofthe component 251 is initialized (for example, if the file system's "open” function were modified to contain one ofthe memory scan functions already described above in FIG. 39).
- the calls to this interface (in this example, "open") are processed normally 252 while at the same time the protective function is invoked 252 (in this example all or part ofthe memory scan).
- the standard result ofthe function 253 is accomplished, and then the standard return status (in this example the standard information about status that the file "open” returns) is returned to the calling process 254 and, as a means for embedded security, the calling process has no way of knowing that any protective function was additionally invoked.
- each process, thread or task in the system can have a dual, or multiple, role.
- One is the true functional role of that component (such as decryption), and the other is to participate in the distributed exit functions that are a significant part ofthe protective function ofthe system.
- Such protective exit functions are sometimes referred to as Assassin processes. Any attempt to compromise the system will result in a mass exit of all system components.
- the distributed nature of this protection across dozens of system tasks results in a very powerful redundant protection model where any attempt to tamper with one part of the system results in a protective response from the rest ofthe system.
- the digital content protective system functions related to exit deferral and management may be integrated into other system functions inseparably, so that their removal is non-trivial.
- the standard function ofthe component 255 is initialized (for example, if the file system's "open" function were modified to contain the exit and messaging related functions described in FIG. 44 through FIG. 47.
- the calls to this interface are processed normally 256 while at the same time the messaging and exit function is invoked 256 (in this example all or part ofthe memory scan).
- the standard processing ofthe ("open" in this example) function is also accomplished 257 (in this example the standard information about status that the file "open” returns) is returned to the calling process 258 and the calling process has no way of knowing that any protective function was additionally invoked.
- FIG. 50 illustrates a process by which all strings and other resource elements are encrypted and decrypted by the system in a volatile fashion when used, and then disposed of, such that they cannot be easily searched for within the code either statically or in memory.
- Product source files can be preprocessed to obscure any searchable strings.
- Each desired source file is processed in turn as in 259, and the agreed upon search-and-replace delimiters that were placed by the developers are found 260 and the strings between them are read and encrypted and then overwritten into their original locations 261.
- Each file is fully processed and closed 262 and the next one in turn is opened 259 until all have been so processed.
- strings were encrypted as specified in FIG. 50, they are made usable to the system as needed.
- each such string as it is read, is passed to a special translation service ofthe digital content protective system 263 and is decrypted, and returned as a temporary variable 264.
- the translated value is used as needed 265 (or conversely a value which is desired to be compared to an already encrypted string is passed to the service 263 and the return value in temp storage 264 is then compared as needed). In either case the value is used as needed 265 and then upon completion of usage, the temporary storage is cleared and re-initialized 266.
- FIG. 52 is directed to a mechanism by which data values that are critical to the system are read and rewritten by a number of decoy or spoof processes, such that debugger watchpoints on these values, if any, will be triggered excessively and it will be difficult to determine which accesses are decoy and which are valid without much deeper debugging. Desired memory locations are specified by the caller, and found by the protective system 267. Each such location is read 268 and written to 269, in many cases the write being the same value as was present prior (read value 268, write same value 269) to ensure correct operation of any system components requiring that value. Between each such group of rapid reads and writes, the protective process above sleeps 270, 271 a period of time the duration of which is determined by tuning processes as specified in FIG. 17.
- the systems and methods present invention allow system and product code to maintain itself in a difficult-to-modify state even if modification is attempted by a sophisticated debugger, editor or other tool.
- Key code elements are rewritten in place, in memory, using whatever mode of privilege is required, many times per second (tens, hundreds, tuned to be optimal as needed), at initialization and during execution, so that any attempts to tamper the code will be changed back to the original state.
- the system may also choose to exit as a result ofthe tampering. For example, in a classic hacker attack, the modification of Import Tables, is defeated in this way.
- Decoy archives and decoy read processes are also established which read from nonencrypted decoy code and write it over the sections, or appear to write it over the sections (writes through the I/O subsystem which are then defeated by tapping into the subsystem and tossing the data away) such that attempts to modify these decoy archives result in no change to the running code.
- product source is preprocessed and delimiters are inserted around critical sections of code.
- the present invention further accommodates certain critical executable components to be processed before shipment to be populated with tens or hundreds of thousands of data values which trigger debugger breakpoints in many debuggers.
- these breakpoints are handled by a null handler and little negative performance impact is achieved.
- each breakpoint stops the debugger and requires the intruder to at the least click the mouse and type into the keyboard.
- a single execution of such a title would require on the order of a hundred thousand mouse-clicks and keyboard presses. The purpose of such is to significantly deter unauthorized debugging, and at the very least to render it as slow and painful as possible.
- the product source code is pre-processed to insert the desired number of breakpoint values 279.
- the source is compiled into executable code 280, and the code is run 281 at some later time on the target computer device 281. Upon such execution, each breakpoint in turn 282 is hit. If no debugger is running, then no actual breakpoint handler is invoked, so there is little or no negative system performance impact. In the event an unauthorized debugging tool is in use, each breakpoint results in a functional breakpoint trap execution, and the user will have to (on most debuggers) press a keyboard or mouse key 283 in order to advance the program counter 284.
- This modification can take the form of gross and/or subtle corruption, yielding unexecutable code or subtle logical alterations in code that runs.
- a cooperating synchronized system process modifies the code back to the correct executable state but only in a rolling window of context in a just-in-time fashion such that at no time is the entire body ofthe content correct, just those parts that are required at the current execution time. Once executed these lines of code are re-corrupted.
- the body of product source and or executable code is pre-processed and critical sections of code selected (either manually by skilled developers, or using automated algorithmic methods) and copied to a protected archive, in encrypted form 285.
- the present invention further includes a system and method by which source, object, or executable code is processed to generate variant different versions of executable code, by means of replacement of content with functionally synonymous content.
- source, object, or executable code For example in the case of executable content, different assembly language instructions and ordering, that produce the same functional outcome, such that no two such versions share the same fingerprint or the same code-line-number relationship per instruction.
- This variation is designed to reduce or eliminate the broadly disseminated effectiveness of hacker tutorials and documents that usually depend on specific line-number directions.
- each product executable file is opened 292 and parsed 293 such that specific assembly language command constructs are identified and noted.
- Such constructs are then replaced by synonymous constructs 294 that vary by the type of assembly language command or by the number of assembly language commands required to accomplish the same task, or by both of these factors.
- the entire file is re-ordered by the processing logic 295 wherever possible without causing it to break or altering its logic. This re-ordering may require that assembly language commands additionally be inserted to jump around the file to the new locations and accomplish the correct ordering of tasks as per the original file.
- This variant product file is written out 296, and the process begins again. Where possible, multiple variants of a given assembly language file are created 297. When all possible variations known to the system have been exhausted, the next product file is opened 298.
Abstract
Description
Claims
Priority Applications (3)
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EP01274516A EP1393145A2 (en) | 2000-11-20 | 2001-11-20 | Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content |
AU2002219852A AU2002219852B2 (en) | 2000-11-20 | 2001-11-20 | Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content |
CA002429587A CA2429587A1 (en) | 2000-11-20 | 2001-11-20 | Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content |
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US24994600P | 2000-11-20 | 2000-11-20 | |
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US60/285,300 | 2001-04-20 | ||
US09/960,610 US7565697B2 (en) | 2000-09-22 | 2001-09-21 | Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content |
US09/960,610 | 2001-09-21 |
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PCT/US2001/044045 WO2003029939A2 (en) | 2000-11-20 | 2001-11-20 | Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content |
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PCT/US2001/043300 WO2002043465A2 (en) | 2000-11-20 | 2001-11-20 | Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content |
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AU (2) | AU2002219852B2 (en) |
CA (1) | CA2429587A1 (en) |
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Cited By (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US7681046B1 (en) | 2003-09-26 | 2010-03-16 | Andrew Morgan | System with secure cryptographic capabilities using a hardware specific digital secret |
US7694151B1 (en) | 2003-11-20 | 2010-04-06 | Johnson Richard C | Architecture, system, and method for operating on encrypted and/or hidden information |
Families Citing this family (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
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US7752139B2 (en) | 2005-12-27 | 2010-07-06 | Michael Noel Hu | Method and system for managing software licenses and reducing unauthorized use of software |
CN105051699A (en) * | 2013-03-28 | 2015-11-11 | 爱迪德技术有限公司 | Generating identifier |
Citations (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
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WO1998044402A1 (en) * | 1997-03-27 | 1998-10-08 | British Telecommunications Public Limited Company | Copy protection of data |
WO1998054713A1 (en) * | 1997-05-30 | 1998-12-03 | Ç-Dilla Limited | Method for copy protecting a record carrier, copy protected record carrier and means for detecting access control information |
Family Cites Families (2)
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PT885417E (en) * | 1996-02-09 | 2002-11-29 | Digital Privacy Inc | CONTROL SYSTEM / ACCESS CRYPTOGRAPHY |
US5754647A (en) * | 1996-03-27 | 1998-05-19 | United Microelectronics Corporation | Software protection apparatus and the method of protection utilizing read-write memory means having inconsistent input and output data |
-
2001
- 2001-11-20 EP EP01274516A patent/EP1393145A2/en not_active Ceased
- 2001-11-20 CA CA002429587A patent/CA2429587A1/en not_active Abandoned
- 2001-11-20 AU AU2002219852A patent/AU2002219852B2/en not_active Ceased
- 2001-11-20 WO PCT/US2001/043300 patent/WO2002043465A2/en not_active Application Discontinuation
- 2001-11-20 WO PCT/US2001/044045 patent/WO2003029939A2/en not_active Application Discontinuation
- 2001-11-20 AU AU2002239280A patent/AU2002239280A1/en not_active Abandoned
Patent Citations (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
WO1998044402A1 (en) * | 1997-03-27 | 1998-10-08 | British Telecommunications Public Limited Company | Copy protection of data |
WO1998054713A1 (en) * | 1997-05-30 | 1998-12-03 | Ç-Dilla Limited | Method for copy protecting a record carrier, copy protected record carrier and means for detecting access control information |
Cited By (2)
Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title |
---|---|---|---|---|
US7681046B1 (en) | 2003-09-26 | 2010-03-16 | Andrew Morgan | System with secure cryptographic capabilities using a hardware specific digital secret |
US7694151B1 (en) | 2003-11-20 | 2010-04-06 | Johnson Richard C | Architecture, system, and method for operating on encrypted and/or hidden information |
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EP1393145A2 (en) | 2004-03-03 |
AU2002219852B2 (en) | 2007-11-01 |
CA2429587A1 (en) | 2003-04-10 |
WO2003029939A3 (en) | 2003-11-06 |
WO2002043465A2 (en) | 2002-06-06 |
AU2002239280A1 (en) | 2002-06-11 |
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