Patent 7577997 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on August, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Tampering with pieces of software is inhibited. Software obfuscation inhibits reverse engineering by hackers by manipulating names of functions and adding jump instructions into various pieces of software. The obfuscation of a software image so as to becloud the comprehension of hackers in reverse engineering pieces of software comprising the software image is provided. Image verification ensures the originality of the pieces of software to be installed.