Portable executable automatic protection using dynamic infection and code redirection

This paper describes an automated technique for protecting portable executable files used in Windows NT Platform. The proposed technique mainly works on Portable Executable format for 32-bit applications. The paper describes the PE format illustrating its main structures followed by an overview on existing protection techniques, and then it illustrates the proposed technique used in packing the PE file in order to protect it against disassembling and reverse engineering. The protection technique involves a static operation on the file reversed by a dynamic one during the run-time. The static and the dynamic operations provide a combined solution for software protection against static (Automatic) and dynamic reverse engineering. The paper studies the effect of protection on the performance and provides a solution to enhance the results. The paper finally proposes a model to integrate the proposed technique with a license management system (LMS) and to manage the digital rights (DRM).