SGXCrypter: IP protection for portable executables using Intel's SGX technology

Executable packing schemes are popular for obfuscating the binary code of a target program through compression or encryption, and can be leveraged for protecting proprietary code against analysis and reverse engineering. Although achieving their confidentiality objective, packed executables are prepended with decryption or decompression code that processes the rest of the binary, which is a lucrative target for reverse-engineering attackers. To thwart such attacks, we introduce a novel packing scheme called SGXCrypter, which utilizes Intel's novel Software Guard Extensions to securely unpack and execute Windows binaries. Unlike state-of-the-art crypters, SGXCrypter's code is never flagged as malicious against 35 popular antivirus engines, minimally increasing the loading time of the protected executable by an average of 0.6 seconds per MB.