Obfuscation: where are we in anti-DSE protections? (a first attempt)
Résumé
Obfuscation is widely used to protect software against man-at-the- end attacks. Recent attacks based on semantic methods, especially dynamic symbolic execution (DSE), have proven extremely powerful against standard obfuscation techniques, leading several teams to investigate anti-DSE protections. Yet, the domain is in its infancy, and the current state of research on the topic is quite unclear. We propose a systematic review of anti-DSE techniques. In particular, we propose a classification and identify strengths and weaknesses of the current lines of research, as well as promising future directions.