use Perl

• been there, done that (Score:2)

  by jmm (276) <johnNO@SPAMperlwolf.com> on 2005.04.11 8:30 (#39586) Journal

  I wrote the initial set of code that Larry turned into the CRYPTSWITCH enabled encryption filter in early perl3. Carrying forward that ability for encrypting scripts was the initial purpose of the Filter module in perl5, although the ability to apply arbitrary filtering to the incoming code stream was designed into it and the Filter::Crypt module was one of the initial examples of how to use that ability.

  But, the company I was at was never foolish enough to believe that encrypting scripts made the code safely unreadable to all end users. It does make it unreadable to coldshot users and it lets the hotshot programmer type users know that the copyright owners of the code don't want to share it with them so if they were to actually copy the code they will clearly be aware of taking part in copyright infringement. Which they generally respect (although they might break the encryption just to prove to themselves that they can). The company didn't believe it because the two of us who implemented the encryption taught them that it was impossible - if the script is going to run at all, then Perl has to be able to read it which means that at some point it has to be in readable form. So, they were foolish enough to ask for the impossible but smart enough to accept that it couldn't be done.

  Reply to This

  • I, haX0r (Score:2)

    by schwern (1528)

    I recall scaring the hell out of a programmer that was relying on Filter::decrypt. He'd thought it was full on encryption rather than just elaborate obfuscation and apparently the company had bought into that, too. I told him I could bust the obfuscation. He didn't believe me so he sent me a simple sample. IIRC my algorithm was something like...
    
    require the code
    walk the symbol table looking for globals and subroutines
    Data::Dumper the globals
    B::Deparse the subroutines
    
    The tricky part was the file-scoped
    • Re:I, haX0r (Score:2)

      by jmm (276)

      I haven't tried it, but what I figured the easiest method (even before B::Deparse came along) would be to write another filter and name it Filter::Decrypt. It would use the "real" Filter::Decrypt but tee the results before passing them on as its "filtered" output. It's the basic man-in-the-middle attack.
      • Re:I, haX0r (Score:2)

        by schwern (1528)

        Wow, I never would have thought of that!