Dmitry Leskov wrote:
So far only some aspects of code protection have been considered in this
(off-)topic, namely preventing illegal use and protecting the code itself as a
piece of intellectual property. However, there are at least two other scenarios
that may make protection against reverse engineering desirable:
- a malicious user inside the organization that runs the application, tampering with the code in order to disrupt its operation, steal sensitive data, and so on.
- a hacker decompiling a legally obtained trial/demo version of a boxed app,
looking for security vulnerabilities.
Note that both do not need to comprehend how the entire application works, they only need to learn enough to determine the vector of attack.
Dmitry
You forgot another one, in the practice much more likely : a disgruntled
employee *inside the organisation that creates the code*, stealing a
copy for his own usage.
I believe it all boils down to "there is no one-size-fits-all" solution.
And anything that is done to "protect" the code has its downside in
terms of ease-of-use, user-friendliness etc..
You can also put 3 separate locks on all the doors of your house, and
require 3 separate family members to be present to open them, each one
with his own key.
It all depends, ultimately, on the kind of application, the kind of
customers, the kind of distribution of the application, the kind of
employees you have, and so on.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Janner [SMTP:jeffrey.jan...@polydyne.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2010 12:09 AM
To: Tomcat Users List; Tomcat Users List
Subject: RE: [OT] Securing Tomcat Applications from Reverse Engineering
Good points all around. We had the same issues with our CEO worrying about
copies of the app being passed around when we started targeting markets where
piracy is fairly common. Eventually, we convinced him the best way to address
them was via legal and marketing techniques. That is, a very tight license and
convincing the customer that our product provides a unique tactical advantage
that they would want to give to their competitors. We did make a few technical
product changes to aid in the license compliance arena, one of which was
incorporating a license key that is uniquely and obviously tied to the company
licensing the product and stored along with the data. The theory being that a
customer (or his employee) might be willing to fork over a copy of the code,
but not their proprietary data.
It's not perfect, but it seems to get the job done.
-----Original Message-----
From: André Warnier [mailto:a...@ice-sa.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 4:56 PM
To: Tomcat Users List
Subject: Re: [OT] Securing Tomcat Applications from Reverse Engineering
Jeffrey Janner wrote:
André -
Welcome to the world of small business, for-profit software development.
This is a more common attitude that you might be aware.
I was being somewhat ironic. Being myself a small for-profit software
development business, I am well aware of the circumstances.
;-)
But here are another few arguments (apart from the ones I already
mentioned in another post) :
If you are a small software business whose customers are businesses that
use your product, and your product is good and your prices are
reasonable, chances are good that none of your customers is even going
to bother taking the time to try to copy your product. If they
themselves are small/medium businesses, what would they do with it ?
They have their own business to run. They are not a software company,
you are.
And if they are big, they will never risk their reputation and their
money trying it.
And, agreeing with another post by Leon, you are probably much better
off spending your time improving and supporting your product, than
developing ways to try protecting it from unfair copying.
Things would be different of course if your product was something
destined for the mass-market, or if you intend to sell it through
resellers, or if your customers are themselves software companies.
I will not mention the fact that in all of the above cases, your highest
level of risk is probably inside, not outside.
And if you really insist on protecting your code, then I am afraid that
Java is not the best choice of tool.
And I'll finish with another sarcastic note about code obfuscation : in
my experience, it is not really necessary to put a lot of effort into
this. Other people's code tends to be naturally obfuscated, all by itself.>
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