site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: darwin-dev@lists.apple.com Thread-index: Ace/Tr/T/m/OjCtBEdyTNgARJHiCXA== Thread-topic: Code Obfuscation User-agent: Microsoft-Entourage/11.3.3.061214 At 7/5/07 4:50 PM -0400, Thomas Inskip <tinskip@gmail.com> wrote:
True, but even encryption is little more than security though obscurity if the keys are stored locally. Requesting a key to decrypt the code via some key exchange mechanism with a remote host is unfortunately not an option in the case I am looking at.
I think you're mixing up "binary executable encryption" and "code obfuscation" here. As mentioned, the encryption comes in when a key is required to decrypt it. Obfuscation is, e.g., source code with variable names changed to meaningless identifiers, so as to obfuscate the intent of the code, while still being able to compile it. This is not uncommon when, say, you discover a compiler bug and your source code is your intellectual property, and you don't want it to be compromised, but you still want to give the compiler makers a test case. I wrote a nice little C obfuscator in perl many years ago - not hard to do.
The purpose here is really to make it just painful enough to discourage reverse engineering.
Reverse-engineering any moderately sized binary is quite painful in and of itself. -Conrad -- Happiness - We're all in it together! _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-dev/site_archiver%40lists.appl... This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com