An Evaluation of Static Java Bytecode Watermarking
Sebastian Danicic, James Hamilton · 2010
The rise in the use of the Internet and bytecode languages such as Java bytecode and Mi- crosoft's Common Intermediate Language have made copying, decompiling and disassembling software eas- ier. The global revenue loss due to software piracy was estimated to be more than $50 billion in 2008. Watermarking is a technique which attempts to pro- tect software by inserting copyright notices or unique identifiers into software to prove ownership. We eval- uate the existing Java static watermarking systems and algorithms by using them to watermark byte- code files and then applying distortive attacks to each watermarked program by obfuscating and optimising. Our study revealed that a high proportion of water- marks were removed as a result of these transforma- tions both in the commercial and academic water- marking systems that we tested. This is further ev- idence that static watermarking techniques on their own do not give sufficient protection against software piracy.