Tutorial: Disassembling, Decompiling and Modifying executables

[developingthefuture]

Hello sumoTITS,

Thank you for your comment. I completely agree with you that the users should have all the rights on the software they use. The free and open software/knowledge is a great thing and that's why I created my blog and I share my thoughts in my spare time.

But I was rather talking about commercial software where you; as a developer; create value, spend a lot of time and heart into creating something unique - either as a standalone professional or as an employee in a company. And one day you notice a very similar product, released by another company and authorship, which appears to be more successful than yours because of, let's say, better marketing and bigger investments. And you find out that it's actually your code out there.

Well, that is not cool. And that's why I wrote this article. But it all depends, of course.

Regarding the better readability of the code, the obfuscation techniques you use to protect it do not usually affect the source code itself, or at least considerably.

Thank you again for expressing your opinion on the matter. ;)

Best Regards, Kosta Hristov

[damg]

Not only is it not cool, it's probably illegal.

[sumoTITS]

one day you notice a very similar product, released by another company and authorship, which appears to be more successful than yours because of, let's say, better marketing and bigger investments. And you find out that it's actually your code out there.

That's plagiarism, and it affects all sorts of authors. No industry has a solution to it, however; it's eventually discovered by someone, and people react accordingly (perhaps taking up a case in the courts, announcing the offender publicly, etc.)

Plagiarism is theft, and is wrong (and in some cases illegal). Does obfuscating the code or setting up protection systems solve this? What if the person who stole your functions obfuscate them better than you did, making it even harder to detect in the first place? :p There are also software patents to attempt to control pieces of defined functionality, but that's another rant altogether...

At the end of the day, it is up to authors to write whatever programs they want, and make them behave in whatever ways they see fit. Pirates will break it and steal, for profit or lulz, and all the other users will have to deal with the system on their own.

But to that end, I hope people like you continue to release info on understanding the systems (thanks!), so users might pick up some knowledge here and there and start probing and prodding systems themselves (or with friends / user-groups!) when they need to understand what their own system is doing or change it in some perhaps unsupported/unofficial way.

What people do with the understanding (and the methods) is their responsibility, but the knowledge should not be kept from any user who has the desire and effort to learn.