Obfuscation Mechanism in Conjunction with Tamper-Proof Module

This paper proposes a software obfuscation mechanism in conjunction with a tamper-proof module. The proposed mechanism overcomes the limitation of software-based obfuscation techniques where an obfuscated program contains critical parameters in itself. We divide a program into two parts: an obfuscated program and secret parameters. The obfuscated program is executed on a mobile phone or a computer, and it cannot be solely analyzed. An applet in the tamper-proof module securely stores the secret parameters and assists the execution of the obfuscation program. We implemented the proposed mechanism on a mobile phone and user identify module.The experiment results provide criteria for leveraging our obfuscation mechanism to protect both small-sized and large-sized programs.