From: Kris Date: 2006-05-23T19:37:21+09:00 Subject: Re: Writing a interpreter extension Leslie Viljoen wrote: > On 5/23/06, Ryan Davis wrote: >> > by a computer it can be cracked by a person. The millions of patches >> > on the Internet prove that even little known programs are cracked >> > as soon >> > as they appear. If your data is hidden by your code being hard to >> > understand, it will be visible very soon - binaries or not. >> >> How true is that? Bypassing a license key check is a LOT different >> than reverse engineering a full binary (and being able to make sense >> of it). I'm no black hat so I'm honestly asking here. I have no clue. :P > > What I'm saying is that bypassing a license key check in a binary and > bypassing a license key check in source are both very easy. Source is > obviously easier but a binary is usually also trivially easy - just > get a debugger and set some break-points, search for some strings, > some API calls... it rarely takes more than 30 minutes. Only for programmers. A key can be found, but it can't be reversed to source. > > In the face of a bit of investigation entire file formats and > protocols are open for all to see - just look at the drop-in > replacements for Exchange, the many programs that can read and write > MS Word documents, the NTFS support on Linux. Protocols have been > decoded and servers hacked without having the source OR the binaries > but just by looking at the comms. With a binary, things are very easy. > > Seriously: your program is visible, your strength needs to lie somewhere > else. > > Les -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.