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Dynamically Obfuscating Virtual Execution Engine (DOVE)

Award Information

Agency:
Department of Defense 		Branch:
Army 		Award ID:
78576 		Program Year/Program:
2006 / SBIR
Agency Tracking Number:
A052-150-0346 		Solicitation Year:
N/A 		Solicitation Topic Code:
N/A 		Solicitation Number:
N/A
Small Business Information
21st Century Technologies Inc.
6011 West Courtyard Drive Bldg 5, Suite 300 Austin, TX -
View profile »
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No
 
Phase 2
Fiscal Year: 2006
Title: Dynamically Obfuscating Virtual Execution Engine (DOVE)
Agency / Branch: DOD / ARMY
Contract: W31P4Q-06-C-0479
Award Amount: $729,987.00
 

Abstract:

The United States Army is increasingly dependent on weapons platforms that rely on commercial off the shelf (COTS) hardware coupled with mission critical embedded software. Autonomous weapons platforms such as unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicles and bomb/mine defusing robots are very effective at assisting the warfighter in countering asymmetric threats. This gives U.S. forces strategic and tactical advantages. Increased autonomy increases the risk of capture and subsequent reverse-engineering. The use of COTS hardware components makes the software much more susceptible to reverse-engineering than customized hardware. Reverse engineering a weapons platform enables an adversary to compromise the platform's mission and cost soldiers' lives. Anti-tamper (AT) and anti-reverse engineering (ARE) methods focus on sufficiently delaying or making it economically infeasible for the adversary; it is well understood that is impossible to entirely prevent re-engineering. The Dynamically Obfuscating Virtual Execution Environment (DOVE) will severely inhibit the adversary's ability to reverse engineer or tamper with weapons software in a timely manner by applying dynamic obfuscation. The dynamic obfuscation in DOVE will undermine and invalidate the software cracker's most basic assumptions about code execution and make it extremely difficult to reverse engineer or tamper with code.

Principal Investigator:

Braxton Thomason
Technical Lead
5123420010
bthomason@21technologies.com

Business Contact:

Darrin Taylor
COO
5123420010
dtaylorz@21technologies.com
Small Business Information at Submission:

21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
4515 Seton Center Parkway, Suite 320 Austin, TX 78759

EIN/Tax ID: 541719551
DUNS: N/A
Number of Employees:
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No