Software Anti-Tamper for Real-Time Systems

Adversaries reverse engineer weapons systems to replicate a system's advanced capabilities or discover its weaknesses. The software in advanced civilian products is similarly reverse engineered by competitors. Many of these critical systems are real-time systems. The restrictions of real-time have a significant impact on the implementation of anti-tamper technology. This work will examine popular real-time operating systems and scheduling algorithms and develop anti-tamper technology that affects an application's timing in a predictable and acceptable way. The resulting system will (1) perform binary-to-binary transformations on programs to provide real-time software with state-of-the-art protection against reverse engineering and, (2) provide information about modifications to the timing characteristics of the program. Source-to-source transformations that offer extra protection will also be explored. As part of the Phase I work, some techniques will be incorporated into a prototype.