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📃 Academic Bibliography

·1016 words

Software birthmarking has been researched extensively. Below is a collection of academic papers detailing the concepts, algorithms, and implementations used by this toolkit.

📜 Publications by Haruaki Tamada (Creator)
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  1. Nikolay Fedorov, Akito Monden, Hiroki Inayoshi, Haruaki Tamada, and Masateru Tsunoda, Project-wise Comparison of Software Birthmarks Using Weighted Partial Similarity, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2026 (submitted).　[ arXiv ]

    • Contribution: Established a framework for project-wise comparison by symmetric aggregation of module-level similarities, then addressed its two failure modes: a weighting scheme favouring larger modules, to suppress incidental similarity from small ones, and a partial similarity over only the top fraction of module pairs, to catch reuse of a small subset of a project. Evaluated on 35 open-source Java projects across ten categories, scored by the harmonic mean of resilience and credibility.

  2. Nikolay Fedorov, Akito Monden, Hiroki Inayoshi, Haruaki Tamada, and Masateru Tsunoda, Detection of LLM-assisted Code Plagiarism Using \(k\)-gram Software Birthmarks, In Proc. 8th World Symposium on Software Engineering (WSSE 2026), October 2026 (Nara, Japan, to appear).　[ arXiv ]

    • Contribution: Asked whether birthmarks survive an LLM paraphrasing the code, using \(k\)-gram birthmarks over Java opcodes for \(k = 1\) to \(6\) against three contemporary models and five similarity measures. They remain effective; the coding-oriented models produced the hardest clones to detect.

  3. Haruaki Tamada, Cross-Platform Software Birthmarking for Real-World Binaries via Intermediate Representation, In Proc. 34th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD2026), August 2026 (Okayama, Japan, Best Special Session Paper Award).　[ arXiv ]

    • Contribution: Proposed a cross-platform birthmarking approach using a Ghidra P-code intermediate representation, demonstrating exceptional architecture consistency (\(r=0.9846\)) and identifying the Simpson index’s resilience against library dilution.

  4. Nikolay Fedorov, Hiroki Inayoshi, Haruaki Tamada, and Akito Monden, Comparison of Similarity Functions for n-gram Software Birthmarks, In Proc. 6th World Symposium on Software Engineering (WSSE 2024), pp. 169–176, September 2024 (Kyoto, Japan).　[ Link ]

    • Contribution: Conducted exhaustive comparison of various similarity algorithms on \(n\)-gram opcode software birthmarks.

  5. Takanori Yokoi, and Haruaki Tamada, Improvement of the Dynamic Software Birthmark Process by Reducing the Time of the Extraction, International Journal of Networked and Distributed Computing, Vol. 6, Issue 4, pp. 224–231, September 2018. [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Proposed using unit tests as the execution driver to reduce dynamic birthmark extraction time while maintaining high credibility and resilience.

  6. Jun Nakamura and Haruaki Tamada, mituba: Scaling up Software Theft Detection with the Search Engine, In Proc. International Conference on Software Engineering and Information Management (ICSIM 2018), pp. 6–10, January 2018 (Casablanca, Morocco). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Improved and scaled up the search-engine-based comparison method proposed in ACIT 2016.

  7. Jun Nakamura and Haruaki Tamada, Fast Comparison of Software Birthmarks for Detecting the Theft with the Search Engine, In Proc. of the 4th International Conference on Applied Computing & Information Technology (ACIT 2016), pp. 152–157, December 2016 (UNLV, Las Vegas, NV, USA). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Demonstrated using a search engine index to rapidly retrieve and match similar birthmarks.

  8. Takehiro Tsuzaki, Teruaki Yamamoto, Haruaki Tamada, and Akito Monden, A Fuzzy Hashing Technique for Large Scale Software Birthmarks, In Proc. 15th IEEE/ACIS International Conference on Computer and Information Science (ICIS 2016), pp. 867–872, July 2016 (Okayama, Japan). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Introduced fuzzy hashing to significantly accelerate software birthmark comparisons.

  9. Kazumasa Fukuda, and Haruaki Tamada, A Dynamic Birthmark from Analyzing Operand Stack Runtime Behavior to Detect Copied Software, In Proc. 13th ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (SNPD 2013), pp. 505–510, July 2013 (Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Proposed a dynamic software birthmarking method for Java based on the runtime behavior and state transitions of the JVM operand stack.

  10. Takesi Kakimoto, Akito Monden, Yasutaka Kamei, Haruaki Tamada, Masateru Tsunoda, and Ken’ichi Matsumoto, Using Software Birthmarks to Identify Similar Classes and Major Functionalities, In Proc. the 3rd International Workshop on Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2006), pp. 171–172, May 2006 (Shanghai, China). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Explored a novel application of software birthmarks to automatically group similar classes and identify major functional modules in large codebases.

  11. Haruaki Tamada, Masahide Nakamura, Akito Monden, and Ken’ichi Matsumoto, Java Birthmarks –Detecting the Software Theft–, IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems, Vol. E88-D, No. 9, pp. 2148–2158, September 2005. [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Formally established the static software birthmarking framework.

  12. Haruaki Tamada, Keiji Okamoto, Masahide Nakamura, Akito Monden, and Ken’ichi Matsumoto, Dynamic Software Birthmarks to Detect the Theft of Windows Applications, In Proc. International Symposium on Future Software Technology 2004 (ISFST 2004), October 2004 (Xi’an, China). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Introduced dynamic software birthmarks, and proposed birthmark types EXESEQ (Execution Sequence) and EXEFREQ (Execution Frequency).

  13. Haruaki Tamada, Masahide Nakamura, Akito Monden, and Ken’ichi Matsumoto, Design and Evaluation of Birthmarks for Detecting Theft of Java Programs, In Proc. IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering (IASTED SE 2004), pp. 569–575, February 2004 (Innsbruck, Austria). [ Link ]

    • Contribution: Proposed the foundational concept of software birthmarks, introducing the static birthmark types CVFV (Constant Value Frequency Vector), UC (Used Classes), SMC (Sequence of Method Calls), and IS (Inheritance Structure).

📄 Other Fundamental Papers on Software Birthmarks
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\(k\)-gram-based birthmarks
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  • Ginger Myles and Christian Collberg, \(k\)-gram-based software birthmarks, In Proc. of the 2005 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, pp. 314–318, March 2005. [ Link ]
    • Summary: Introduced the extraction of instruction sequences chunked into sliding windows (\(k\)-grams) for highly robust program similarities.

Whole Program Path (Dynamic Birthmarks)
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  • Ginger Myles and Christian Collberg, Detecting Software Theft via Whole Program Path Birthmarks, In Proc. of the International Conference on Information Security 2004, pp. 404–415, 2004.
    • Summary: Proposed dynamic birthmarking based on whole program execution paths.

📚 Systematic Surveys and Books
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  • Christian Collberg and Jasvir Nagra, Surreptitious Software: Obfuscation, Watermarking, and Tamperproofing for Software Protection, Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN: 978-0-321-54925-9, August 2009.

    • Summary: The leading comprehensive book covering software security, obfuscation, watermarking, and birthmarking techniques.

  • Shah Nazir, Sara Shahzad and Neelam Mukhtar, Software Birthmark Design and Estimation: A Systematic Literature Review, Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, Vol. 44, pp. 3905–3927, January 2019.

    • Summary: A comprehensive review mapping out the state-of-the-art developments and methodologies in software birthmarking.