SBIR-STTR Award

Deobfuscating tools for the validation and verification of tamper-proofed software
Award last edited on: 11/2/2006

Sponsored Program
STTR
Awarding Agency
DOD : OSD
Total Award Amount
$100,000
Award Phase
1
Solicitation Topic Code
OSD06-NC5
Principal Investigator
Greg Hoglund

Company Information

HBGary Inc (AKA: Hbgary Federal Inc)

3604 Fair Oaks Boulevard Suite 250
Sacramento, CA 95864
   (916) 459-4727
   hoglund@hbgary.com
   www.hbgary.com

Research Institution

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Phase I

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Phase I year
2006
Phase I Amount
$100,000
Tamper-proofed software and malicious binaries, commonly referred to as “malware”, often share similar technological features. Both good and bad guys wish to hinder static and dynamic reverse engineering of their software programs to thwart adversaries from gaining program understanding and to prevent the observation of code behavior. HBGary proposes the Virtual Machine for Analysis (VMA), a full-virtualization machine environment that completely subverts current and upcoming tamper-proofing technologies. Rather than being designed for “typical” virtual execution of applications and operating systems, VMA will be designed with invasive debugging and data collection capabilities specifically for evaluating tamper-proofed software. This proposal details the use of a high-fidelity, highly-controlled emulation environment to create an undetectable, dynamically reconfigurable VMA. The advantage, is that VMA will perform ‘undetectable’ debugging; that is, the system being debugged cannot detect that it is being debugged. Traditional ‘native’ debuggers have trouble debugging such structures because native debuggers rely upon some of these structures being untampered

Phase II

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Phase II year
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Phase II Amount
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