Arxan offers a number of Anti-Tamper Software products for application and cryptographic key protection. These include:
Arxan Code Protection to secure Mobile, IoT & Embedded, Desktop and Server applications
Arxan Cryptographic Key & Data Protection to secure secret keys and data with white-box cryptography, which provide all the major crypto algorithms and features required to protect sensitive keys and data in hostile or untrusted operational environments.
In May 2012, the company announced comprehensive support for Android application protection and hardening against tampering and piracy. In June 2014, Arxan announced that its mobile application protection offerings will be sold by IBM as part of IBM's portfolio of security products.
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The core technology consists of a multi-layered, interconnected network of Guards that each perform a specific security function and are embedded into application binaries to make programs tamper-aware, tamper-resistant, and self-healing. The company claims a three-layer protection paradigm of defend, detect and react as a differentiating approach.
By detecting when an attack is being attempted and responding to detected attacks with alerts and repairs, this protection helps secure software against hacking attacks and threats such as:
static reverse engineering or code analysis
dynamic reverse engineering or debugging
tampering to disable or circumvent security mechanisms (authentication, encryption, anti-virus, security policies, etc.)
tampering to modify program functionality
tampering for piracy or unauthorized use
insertion of malware into an application
counterfeiting and IP theft
stealing of cryptographic keys
IoT anti-tamper
Arxan's IoT products insert the anti-tamper protection into the firmware of the device itself, causing parts of the code to continually check each other for integrity. If any tamper attempt is detected, Arxan's product can either attempt to restore the code to its original form, stop the firmware from running entirely, send a notification to the developer or any combination of the three.
DRM
Its DRM solutions have been compared to their competitor Denuvo, with both working to provide a layer of anti-tamper security on top of already existing copy protection mechanisms added by the developer. This results in a multi-layered approach in which the original DRM software protects the software from unauthorized copying, modification or use, while Arxan prevents any attempt to remove or alter said protection. However, much like with Denuvo's application of it, this approach has also been criticised for increasing the use of system resources. Arxan has previously expressed strong confidence that its DRM solutions would not be cracked, but in fact cracks or bypasses for Arxan products have been shown to exist; in one example Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection was successfully cracked in 2018 while using a five-layer approach featuring UWP, XbLA, MSStore, EAppX and Arxan protection simultaneously. Several more bypasses of Arxan's protection have since emerged in 2018 and 2019, with Arxan-protected Gears 5 being cracked by a scene group less than two weeks following its original release.
