On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 4:48 AM, Peter Hudson <[email protected]> wrote:
> Does this code report on my app being debugged by any third party, even when
> the app has been stripped of symbols ?

It does precisely what it claims to do: asks the kernel if the
P_TRACED flag is set on your process, which means a debugger has used
the kernel to attach to your process.

> Would it work irrespective of the debugging tool used ?

If you think this is going to help you avoid piracy, it's not. OS X
has a flag (PT_DENY_ATTACH) that the kernel checks for when a debugger
asks to attach to a process. If that flag is set, the kernel refuses
to allow the debugger to attach. iTunes famously does this to prevent
people from inspecting the operations of the DRM system. It's a
trivial matter to patch the kernel to not respect this flag, and it
would be equally trivial to patch the kernel to not inform you of a
debugger's presence even if you asked.

Barring that, I'd just run your app in a virtual machine and examine
it directly.

--Kyle Sluder
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