Code Obfuscation Against Abstract Model Checking Attacks

Code protection technologies require anti reverse engineering transformations to obfuscate programs in such a way that tools and methods for program reasoning become ineffective. In this paper we introduce the concept of model deformation as code obfuscation against attacks performed by abstract model checking and abstraction refinement. We transform Kripke structures in order to make the removal of spurious counterexamples by abstraction refinement maximally inefficient. Because our approach is intended to defeat the fundamental abstraction refinement strategy, we are independent from the specific attack carried out by abstract model checking. A measure of the quality of the obfuscation obtained by model deformation is given together with a corresponding best obfuscation strategy for abstract model checking.