A metamorphic virus applies semantics preserving transformations on itself to create a different variant before propagation. Metamorphic computer viruses thwart current anti-virus technologies that use signatures - a fixed sequence of bytes from a sample of a virus - since two variants of a metamorphic virus may not share the same signature. A method to impose an order on the statements and components of expressions of a program is presented. The method, called a "Zeroing transformation," Reduces the number of possible variants of a program created by reordering statement, reshaping expression, and renaming variable.
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