DEF CON 30 - Patrick Wardle, Tom McGuire - Deja Vu - Uncovering Stolen Algorithms in Commercial Prod

In an ideal world, members of a community work together towards a common goal or greater good. Unfortunately, we do not (yet) live in such a world. In this talk, we discuss what appears to be a systemic issue impacting our cyber-security community: the theft and unauthorized use of algorithms by corporate entities. Entities who themselves may be part of the community. First, we’ll present a variety of search techniques that can automatically point to unauthorized code in commercial products. Then we’ll show how reverse-engineering and binary comparison techniques can confirm such findings. Next, we will apply these approaches in a real-world case study. Specifically, we’ll focus on a popular tool from a non-profit organization that was reverse-engineered by multiple entities such that its core algorithm could be recovered and used (unauthorized), in multiple commercial products. The talk will end with actionable takeaways and recommendations, as who knows, this may happen to you too! For one, we'll present strategic approaches (and the challenges) of confronting culpable commercial entities (and their legal teams). Moreover, we’ll provide recommendations for corporations to ensure this doesn’t happen in the first place, thus ensuring that our community can remain cohesively focused on its mutual goals.