From: Lennon Day-Reynolds <rcoder@...>
Date: 2004-07-08T04:51:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Secure Ruby Compiler

UPX can only compress the Ruby core files and DLLs you feed into
Exerb, not the finished EXE, but I've found it still usually gives a
40-50% reduction in the total binary size. So, your installed app
might run in the 2.5-3.0MB range, with the installer about the same as
it is now, since multiple compression runs usually don't but you much.

UPX might offer a pretty good way to protect reg. key algorithms and
other sensitive strings, as well; as a naive solution, you could just
try compiling them into a simple C extension, and running UPX on the
shared object for that library. The DLL/SO file would then be in a
packed binary format that should frustrate at least casual crackers,
and forcing you to extern sensitive strings into an outside extension
might help you take into account which items were indeed sensitive,
rather than just obfuscating everything.

Lennon