Danny Brian wrote:
It will always be true that a dedicated hacker will be able to
decompile, dump opcodes, or otherwise reverse engineer the work of
another, regardless of the language or file format. But the value of
compiling a program is not so much its security, but its illusion of
security, and discouragement of all but the most determined folks from
stealing the work of another. It's incorrect to claim that compiling
or encrypting code does not protect it to a large degree, especially
when the usual suspects are running CGI's hosted in a shared
environment on some big web server, with no real programming know-how.
I think it may also be useful to be able to prove in a court that you
took steps to keep your secrets away from prying eyes, and that whoever
belonged to those prying eyes deliberately took steps to uncover your
secret - Regardless of the actual level of security provided by those
steps ..
Tim
