Special Issue on Offensive and Defensive Techniques in the Context of Man At The End (MATE) Attacks
Guest Editors:
- Michele Ianni, University of Calabria, Italy,
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - Sebastian Schrittwieser, University of Vienna, Austria,
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MATE (Man-At-The-End) is an attacker model where an adversary has access to the target software or hardwareenvironment of his victim and the ability to observe and modify it in order to extract secrets such as cryptographickeys or sensitive information, possibly with the subsequent goal of altering code integrity or inserting backdoors,among others. A typical example of such a scenario is the case of an attack on a stolen smartphone or againstsoftware leveraging protection to hide sensitive data or intellectual property.
The main focus of the special issue on Offensive and Defensive Techniques in the Context of Man At The End (MATE)Attacks is on new models and techniques to defend software from tampering, reverse engineering, and piracy aswell as to the development of new attack strategies that highlight the need of more complete defenses. We includeboth offensive and defensive techniques because of their close and intertwined relationship depending on theattack scenario: indeed, reverse engineering is defensive when the goal is to analyze obfuscated malware, but it isoffensive when it is used to steal intellectual property and assets in legitimate software. Likewise, obfuscation isdefensive when it aims for protecting a legitimate asset against reverse engineering, while it is offensive if it is usedto hide that malware is embedded in an application. Both scenarios are of practical relevance, and therefore thespecial issue on Offensive and Defensive Techniques in the Context of Man At The End (MATE) Attacks includes allattacks on/defenses of the confidentiality and integrity of software applications and assets embedded therein andexposed to MATE attacks. In such scenarios, attackers have full control over, and white-box access to, the softwareand the systems on which they attack the software in their labs.
Strongly encouraged are proposals of new, speculative ideas, metrics, tools, and procedures for evaluating tamper-proofing, watermarking, obfuscation, birthmarking, and software protection algorithms in general. Assessment of new or known techniques in practical settings and discussions of emerging threats, and problems are expected. Likewise, reverse engineering of low-level constructs such as machine code or gate-level circuit definitions through static and dynamic analysis is geared to recover information to determine the intent of programs and understand their inner workings as well as for classifying them with respect to similar known code (which is typically malicious). The special issue on Offensive and Defensive Techniques in the Context of Man At The End (MATE) Attacks welcomes original work on the formal investigation of software protection, where formal methods are used to better understand the nature, relations, potentialities, and limits of software security techniques.
Important Dates
- Submissions deadline: 30 November 2024
- First-round review decisions: 15 March 2025
- Deadline for revision submissions: 30 April 2025
- Notification of final decisions: 30 June 2025
- Tentative publication: 30 September 2025.
Please contact:
Michele Ianni, University of Calabria, Italy,
Sebastian Schrittwieser, University of Vienna, Austria,
For more information about topics and submission, see https://dl.acm.org/pb-assets/static_journal_pages/dtrap/pdf/ACM-DTRAP-SIODTCMATEA-1708637350820.pdf
