On Wed, 09 May 2012 19:24:48 -0700, Nick Sabalausky
<seewebsitetocontac...@semitwist.com> wrote:
"H. S. Teoh" <hst...@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote in message
news:mailman.510.1336610145.24740.digitalmar...@puremagic.com...
On Wed, May 09, 2012 at 08:06:24PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
There's no need for all that.
The whole point here is "Compile to some obfuscated form" right? So
just make/use a good code obfuscator. Done. Problem solved.
Inventing an AST storage format just to obfuscate some code is
unnecesary overkill (although maybe it might have some other use).
This "just use an obfuscator" approach even makes the whole DI system
become totally redundant (except for binding to C code, of course).
[...]
This is an interesting idea. Probably more feasible than mine.
You don't necessarily have to throw away the DI system; some people may
sleep better at night if their proprietary algorithms are in binary
executable form only (though personally I think that's just self
delusion, but who am I to judge?).
An ambassador of sanity, that's who ;)
It's not just your personal opinion, it's hard fact: From a
reverse-engineering standpoint, executable binary form *is* nothing more
than obfuscation (except perhaps if it's an *encrypted* binary form, but
I've never heard of a lib that did that, heck it would require special
toolchain support anyway). Believing binary libs are more secure than
that
is just simply incorrect, period, opinion doesn't enter into it. 2+2
*is* 4
whether you believe it or not. Life isn't looney tunes, you don't walk on
air just because nobody taught you gravity. Etc.
Fuck if you want to steal something, you don't even need any source -
obfuscated or not. Commercial games, for example, never release *any*
source. *Only* the final binaries are distributed, and even *those* are
usually encrypted. And yet they *still* get pirated like crazy. So the
source is locked away - fat lot of fucking good THAT did! (Ok, so it's
harder to make an unauthorized modification, who the hell cares - the
*original* is *already* out there getting ripped off, plus why would
deviants wanna waste time modding when they can just sell bootlegs?)
So source vs binary doesn't make a damn bit of difference, period - if
all
you have is the binary, well, to use it you just *run* it! You don't need
*any* sources to use it. You just use it. The only thing that can even
make
any difference is encryption (which still isn't truly "secure").
And for that matter, nobody's algorithms are proprietary. Code is
proprietary. 99.9999999...9999999% of algorithms are not. For example,
wrapping some action in a foreach to make a batch processor and adding an
option box to enable it is not a fucking proprietary algorithm no matter
what the suits and the subhuman USPTO fuckwads think. Real-world example:
There isn't a fucking thing proprietary in Marmalade's MKB build system
(it's a stinking *build system* for fucks sake!).
And even for any algos that are proprietary, if such algos even
exist...well, why bother trying to get the source? If you've got the
binary
already, just *USE* it! Who cares about the damn source? If I wanted to
give
someone access to Marmalade's MKB build system, the fact that half of
it's
distributed in pyc-only does would do jack shit to stop me. And obviously
there's no proprietary algos in there, again, it's just a fucking build
system. So there's no algorithms to steal. *Only* thing it does is make
it
impractical for me to work around any problems I encounter. Oh yea, and
it
gives Marmalade's suit-department a big collective stiffy because their
mini-monkey brains are telling them they're actually *earning* their
paychecks. (Corona's 50x worse though, FWIW. You don't even *have* their
software, you just rent the right to send your project to them and have
*them* build it for you.)
Excess offtopic ranting aside, *some* things are opinion: "Red is the
best
color" <-- That's an opinion. "It is/isn't worthwhile to keep the source
locked up." <- Even *that's* an opinion, too, note the vauge
"worthwhile".
But merely having different viewpoints doesn't make something opinion.
Either it's opinion or it isn't. You're not stating mere opinion here -
you're stating honest-to-goodness FACT: Considering well-obfuscated
source
less secure than compiled binary form *is* delusion, period.
I actually agree with you, im just telling you what I hear from PHB's.
So you just take the existing .di
files, complete with all their warts and function bodies and whatever,
and run an obfuscator on them. Ship the .di and your shared library as
usual. Problem solved.
Or just skip the di entirely. It'll all just get obfuscated one way or
the
other, so there's not much point.
We need some way to export the symbols without the underlying code, it
makes for faster compile times and having the API handy can be useful to
development tools.
However, my experience with PHB's is that as long as you don't send out
the actual source files but some form of sanitized header, the PHB's don't
really care beyond that.
That'd why I think embedding a version of the source D files that has been
semantically analyzed could be helpful, you can pull in the source for
CTFE as needed, but the only thing you have to actually ship out is the
library file itself, it just happens to have source files inside. In my
experience in the .NET world, this is good enough for the PHB's. Out of
sight, out of mind as they say. So what if it's trickery, we developers
get a benefit to, we don't have to wrangle include files.
Plus, all of this is already possible with the current system, except
for the only missing piece of a D obfuscator.
DustMite has some obfuscation capability, although I don't know how
extensive it is or whether it would be enough make the pointy-haired
suits
happy. (Then again, *anything* can be enough to make a suit happy - you
just
have to present it in the right salesmany (read: "convoluted and full of
shit") way. They'll swallow any amount of bullshit you give them, you
just
have to make it *sound* good. Suits don't know the difference. Fuck,
most of
them don't even know there *is* a difference. That's why salesmen exist -
because bullshitting WORKS on suits (and on many others), in fact, most
of
the time, it's the *only* thing that works on suits. Bullshit is the only
language those fuckers speak and understand.)
(Wait, I hear you cry. But what about the library API? How would users
know how to use the library if the .di is incomprehensible? As somebody
pointed out in another thread: just ship the ddocs generated from the
unobfuscated source with the library. Users don't need to read the .di.
Problem solved.)
Yea, the signatures (not even the definitions) of the symbols which make
up
the public interface are the only parts that must remain non-obfuscated.
But
of course, those *still* need to be non-obfuscated even under the
old-fashioned C-style "lib + headers" approach. Don't even need any
markup
to signal these "don't touch" symbols to the obfuscator - just make a
series
of wrappers in separate files for the public API and tell the obfuscator
"don't obfuscate the signatures in files x, y and z."
--
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/
