title: A novel rules based approach for estimating software birthmark.
abstract: Software birthmark is a unique quality of software to detect software theft. Comparing birthmarks of software can tell us whether a program or software is a copy of another. Software theft and piracy are rapidly increasing problems of copying, stealing, and misusing the software without proper permission, as mentioned in the desired license agreement. The estimation of birthmark can play a key role in understanding the effectiveness of a birthmark. In this paper, a new technique is presented to evaluate and estimate software birthmark based on the two most sought-after properties of birthmarks, that is, credibility and resilience. For this purpose, the concept of soft computing such as probabilistic and fuzzy computing has been taken into account and fuzzy logic is used to estimate properties of birthmark. The proposed fuzzy rule based technique is validated through a case study and the results show that the technique is successful in assessing the specified properties of the birthmark, its resilience and credibility. This, in turn, shows how much effort will be required to detect the originality of the software based on its birthmark.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Peshawar, Peshawar 25000, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Shah
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0126-9944
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nazir
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Peshawar, Peshawar 25000, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Sara
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-1812-236X
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shahzad
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan 23200, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Sher Afzal
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-0273-1248
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Khan
authors.affiliation: Ibnu Sina Institute for Fundamental Science Studies, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 Johor Bahru, Malaysia.
authors.forename: Norma Binti
authors.initials: NB
authors.lastname: Alias
authors.affiliation: Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar 25000, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Sajid
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Anwar