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arXiv · 2603.10608

An Approach for Safe and Secure Software Protection Supported by Symbolic Execution

Daniel Dorfmeister·Flavio Ferrarotti·Bernhard Fischer·Evelyn Haslinger·Rudolf Ramler·Markus Zimmermann
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Abstract

We introduce a novel copy-protection method for industrial control software. With our method, a program executes correctly only on its target hardware and behaves differently on other machines. The hardware-software binding is based on Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs). We use symbolic execution to guarantee the preservation of safety properties if the software is executed on a different machine, or if there is a problem with the PUF response. Moreover, we show that the protection method is also secure against reverse engineering.

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Daniel Dorfmeister, Flavio Ferrarotti, Bernhard Fischer, Evelyn Haslinger, Rudolf Ramler, Markus Zimmermann. 2026-03-11. An Approach for Safe and Secure Software Protection Supported by Symbolic Execution. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39689-2_7

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