Systems and methods for preventing unauthorized use of digital content

• US 8,261,359 B2
• Filed: 06/01/2010
• Issued: 09/04/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 09/22/2000
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: SCA IPLA Holdings Incorporated (Sony Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: SCA IPLA Holdings Incorporated (Sony Group Corp.)
• Inventors: Levine, Richard B., Lee, Andrew R., Howard, Daniel G., Goldman, Daniel M., Hart, John J. III
• Primary Examiner(s): Chai, Longbit
• Application Number:
  US12/791,644
• Publication Number:
  US 20100306552A1
• Time in Patent Office: 826 Days
• Field of Search: 726/26
• US Class Current: 726/26
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/14 against software analysis or reverse engineering, e.g. by obfuscation
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2107 File encryption

Abstract

Theft, distribution, and piracy of digital content (software, video, audio, e-books, any content of any kind that is digitally stored and distributed) is generally accomplished by copying it, if possible, or, if it is protected from being copied in any fashion, such piracy is based upon a number of reverse engineering techniques. Aside from the straightforward copying of unprotected content, all of these other methods require first an understanding of the protective mechanism(s) guarding the content, and finally an unauthorized modification of that protection in order to disable or subvert it. Methods that prevent a skilled individual from using reverse engineering tools and techniques to attain that level of understanding and/or prevent anyone from performing such modifications can offer significant advantages to content creators who wish to protect their products.

Claims

1. A method for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a computer system comprising:

examining, with a processor, system devices that are operating in the computer system;

determining, with the processor, whether any of the system devices are emulator devices; and

initiating, with the processor, a nondeterministic defense action that includes exiting of system programs in a nondeterministic order in response to a determination that an emulator device is operating on the computer system, wherein the nondeterministic defense action obfuscates a cause of the defense action by at least deferring of said exiting.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the system devices comprise physical devices or logical entities.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the emulator devices comprise hardware-based emulator devices or software-based emulator devices.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the exiting of system programs includes crashing the computer system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the exiting of system programs includes a cascading exit event caused communication of a command to exit between the system programs.

6. A method for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a single computer system comprising:

executing, a plurality of system processes residing at a processor of the single computer system;

monitoring, with the processor, at each of the plurality of system processes for unauthorized use and each of the system processes transferring a status message to another of the plurality of system processes related to the unauthorized use; and

each of the plurality of system processes determining, with the processor, whether an unauthorized use of the digit content data has occurred, and, if such a determination is made, initiating, with the processor, a nondeterministic defense action wherein the nondeterministic defense action obfuscates a cause of the defense action includes exiting of system processes in a nondeterministic order by at least deferring of said exiting.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the status messages further relate to authorized use.

8. The method of claim 6 further comprising interleaving and encrypting, with the processor, each status message before transferring the status message.

9. The method of claim 6 wherein the status messages are temporarily stored at a virtual memory location on the computer system.

10. The method of claim 6 wherein initiating the nondeterministic defense action includes initiating a nondeterministic order of exit of system entities.

11. A method for preventing unauthorized use of digital content data hosted on a computer system comprising:

during the operation of a function operating on the computer system,

determining, with a processor, whether an unauthorized use of the digital content data is in progress; and

in the case where an unauthorized use is determined, initiating, with the processor, a nondeterministic defense action, which includes exiting of system programs in a nondeterministic order by at least deferring of said exiting, that is integrated into the function wherein the nondeterministic defense action obfuscates a cause of the defense action.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the function is a non-defensive function.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein the nondeterministic defense action comprises reading and writing, with the processor, data values critical to system operation repeatedly to a decoy process.

14. The method of claim 11, wherein the exiting of system programs includes crashing the computer system.