Software Watermark Scheme

IoT devices around the world are used by many industries daily. The processing of sensible information, execution of critical applications, and legislation like GDPR (EU General Data Protection Regulation) have made the security of embedded systems a growing concern. In such context, regulatory organs compliance and third-party audits are important to ensure security standards. However, there must be measures to discourage and detect alterations of programs after they are validated by these entities. In this paper, we propose novel embedding and extraction algorithms for a software watermark, alongside a working implementation for C programs. The watermark is inserted into a function control flow, making it inherently furtive and destructive to the program itself in case of a removal attack. With such algorithms, IoT devices can have signatures of different parties integrated into their software in a way that allows their reliable confirmation.