Embedded software used in industrial systems frequently relies on data that ensures the correct and efficient operation of these systems. Thus, companies invest considerable resources in fine-tuning this data, making it their valuable intellectual property (IP). We present a novel protection mechanism for this IP that combines hardware fingerprints with Boolean logic. Unlike usual copy-protection approaches, unauthorised copies of the software still run on cloned devices but suboptimally. According to our security evaluation, only a complex dynamic analysis of the protected software running on the genuine target device can reveal the secret data. This makes the protection offered by our method more difficult to bypass. Notably, our approach does not require additional hardware, relying only on relatively simple updates to the software. We evaluate our protection mechanism by binding the parameters of a PID controller to a microcontroller unit (MCU) by using a physically unclonable function (PUF) based on its SRAM.

翻译：工业系统中使用的嵌入式软件通常依赖于确保系统正确高效运行的数据。因此，企业投入大量资源对这些数据进行精细调整，使其成为宝贵的知识产权。我们提出了一种新颖的知识产权保护机制，该机制将硬件指纹与布尔逻辑相结合。与常见的复制保护方法不同，未经授权的软件副本仍可在克隆设备上运行，但性能欠佳。根据我们的安全评估，只有对在真实目标设备上运行的受保护软件进行复杂的动态分析，才能揭示秘密数据。这使得我们方法提供的保护更难以被绕过。值得注意的是，我们的方法无需额外的硬件，仅依赖于对软件进行相对简单的更新。我们通过使用基于SRAM的物理不可克隆函数，将PID控制器的参数绑定到微控制器单元上，从而评估了我们的保护机制。