Tamper resistant player for scrambled contents

An apparatus comprising:

• a storage medium having stored therein a plurality of plain text programming instructions designed to decode descrambled content, and a first group of plain text and obfuscated cells of programming instructions designed to implement an integrity verifier that performs integrity verification on the plurality of plain text programming instructions, wherein the obfuscated cells are mutated through an inter-cell dependent mutation process;
• and
• an execution unit coupled to the storage medium for executing the programming instructions.

An apparatus comprising:

• a storage medium having stored therein a first group of plain text and obfuscated cells of programming instructions designed to implement a secrets holder that holds a plurality of secrets associated with playing scrambled contents, wherein the obfuscated cells are mutated through an inter-cell dependent mutation process;
• and
• an execution unit coupled to the storage medium for executing the programming instructions.

An apparatus comprising:

• a storage medium having stored therein a first group of plain text and obfuscated cells of programming instructions designed to implement an authenticator that provides appropriate authentication challenges to a scrambled content provider device, and generates appropriate authentication responses to authentication challenges from the scrambled content provider device, wherein the obfuscated cells are mutated through an inter-cell dependent mutation process;
• and
• an execution unit coupled to the storage medium for executing the programming instructions.

A method comprising:

• a) executing a first group of plain text and obfuscated cells of programming instructions to perform integrity verification on a plurality of plain text programming instructions designed to decode descrambled content;
• and
• b) executing a second group of plain text and obfuscated cells of programming instructions to store a plurality of secrets associated with descrambling scrambled content if integrity of the plurality of plain text programming instructions is verified in (a).