Detecting Java theft based on static API trace birthmark

Abstract

Software birthmark is the inherent program characteristics that can identify a program. In this paper, we propose a static API trace birthmark to detect Java theft. Because the API traces can reflect the behavior of a program, our birthmark is more resilient than the existing static birthmarks. Because the API traces are extracted by static analysis, they can be applied to library programs which earlier dynamic birthmarks cannot handle properly. We evaluate the proposed birthmark in terms of credibility and resilience. Experimental results show that our birthmark can detect common library modules of two packages while other birthmarks fail to detect. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.