This paper provides a new approach to computer software executable fingerprinting, one that is based upon mathematically describable transformations of the software and which shows promise in terms of fingerprinting credibility and robustness. The research presented here describes a software executable fingerprinting technique which may be used to uniquely mark software executables as originating from a specific vendor or developer in much the same way as a cryptographic digital signature can be uniquely credited to the holder the private key used to create the digital signature. This effort began as an investigation into software obfuscation techniques but during the course of the research, it became apparent that the technique being developed was more applicable to a real-world, non-obfuscation application, namely software executable fingerprinting; the reader will find that software obfuscation and software fingerprinting are quite closely related.
