open source C obfuscator tool?
ap...@student.open.ac.uk
to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
I did actually try to Stunnix one and ran into problems with the demo
right away and found it to be user-hostile (IMO).
Regards,
Andrew Marlow
--
comp.lang.c.moderated - moderation address: cl...@plethora.net -- you must
have an appropriate newsgroups line in your header for your mail to be seen,
or the newsgroup name in square brackets in the subject line. Sorry.
WillerZ
> I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
What are you trying to achieve? If you want to stop anyone recreating
the source from your binaries just whack the optimiser right up and use
inter-procedure analysis if your compiler has it.
It's fairly futile to try and prevent people understanding source you
give them - a combination of GNU indent and a preprocessor with some
kind of don't-process-#include flag is pretty powerful.
> I did actually try to Stunnix one and ran into problems with the demo
> right away and found it to be user-hostile (IMO).
Makes sense for it to be hostile: it's doing a maintainer-hostile job.
Jonathan Leffler
> I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
opqcp shows up with a Google search - admittedly dating to 1996 (or
1992), but nonetheless there. So, where did you look?
The other two are harder to locate reliably - the 'Shroud of Turin' gets
in the way, amongst other things.
> I did actually try to Stunnix one and ran into problems with the demo
> right away and found it to be user-hostile (IMO).
--
Jonathan Leffler #include <disclaimer.h>
Email: jlef...@earthlink.net, jlef...@us.ibm.com
Guardian of DBD::Informix v2007.0226 -- http://dbi.perl.org/
Ark Khasin
> I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
>
> I did actually try to Stunnix one and ran into problems with the demo
> right away and found it to be user-hostile (IMO).
>
> Regards,
>
> Andrew Marlow
It is not open source but free for non-commercial use.
It is very basic but it does the job well.
<OT> Your email is broken </OT>
-- Ark
Ark Khasin
> I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
>
> I did actually try to Stunnix one and ran into problems with the demo
> right away and found it to be user-hostile (IMO).
>
> Regards,
>
> Andrew Marlow
It is very basic but it does the job well.
ta0...@yahoo.com
> I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
I don't have an answer for you, just a comment. It's my guess that
most open-source developers don't have an interest in code obfuscation
because that is essentially the opposite of open-source. Its main use
is to make code unreadable when there is no other choice but to
distribute it in source code form, and is meant to prevent concept
copying and modification, both of which open-source promotes. I find
it unlikely you will come across a tool other than an academic one
with readable source code. Keep in mind also that obfuscated source
code isn't open-source compliant. It needs to be in "the preferred
format for modification" which is obviously not cryptic code that
somehow compiles. Are you looking for "free" or for "source code"?
Kevin P. Barry
ap...@student.open.ac.uk
> I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
Perhaps the moderators can comment on the FAQ entry. IMO it does need
updating.
> I did actually try to Stunnix one and ran into problems with the demo
> right away and found it to be user-hostile (IMO).
Through strange circomstances I find myself needing to obfuscate some
C code before sending it onto to a third-party I am dealing with.
Surely I cannot be the only one in this situation. There seem to be
plenty of java obfuscators around. Has all C development been replaced
with java?
I am using C because I have to use a third-party library that is only
available in C. I have designed a wrapper whose header can be
processed through SWIG to generate a java wrapper. So most of our work
can now be done in java. However, the third-party library has memory
corruption bugs. I have a C program that shows these bugs using
dbmalloc. The third-party want the source for this test program to
reproduce the bugs. Understandable but I want to keep the way we do
the wrapping hidden.
Maybe this situation is unusual in the world of C, now that much more
java development goes on. Any comments please?
ap...@student.open.ac.uk
> ap...@student.open.ac.uk wrote:
> > I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> > to obfus, shroud, or opqcp.
> Take a look at Snob (http://www.macroexpressions.com/snob.html)
> It is not open source but free for non-commercial use.
> It is very basic but it does the job well.
Thanks, this is just the sort of thing I was looking for. I think it
should be mentioned in the FAQ.
> <OT> Your email is broken </OT>
Replies should always be to the newsgroup, not by email. Besides, if
that email worked it would be harvested by scumbags and deluged by
spam.
-Andrew Marlow
ap...@student.open.ac.uk
> On Aug 21, 5:29 pm, ap...@student.open.ac.uk wrote:
>
> > I know this is a FAQ but the FAQ entry is out of date, IMO. It refers
> > to obfus, shroud, or opqcp. obfus is the old name for the commercial
> > Stunnix obfuscator, shroud is the Gimpel s/w one that seems to have
> > disappeared and I can find no reference to opqcp. So I wonder if
> > anyone knows of any open source C obfuscator please?
>
> I don't have an answer for you, just a comment. It's my guess that
> most open-source developers don't have an interest in code obfuscation
> because that is essentially the opposite of open-source. Its main use
> is to make code unreadable when there is no other choice but to
> distribute it in source code form, and is meant to prevent concept
> copying and modification, both of which open-source promotes.
You've got a point there :-)
> Keep in mind also that obfuscated source
> code isn't open-source compliant. It needs to be in "the preferred
> format for modification" which is obviously not cryptic code that
> somehow compiles. Are you looking for "free" or for "source code"?
I am looking for a curently-released-free-of-charge, i.e free as in
beer. But I did like the idea of it being buildable from source
because then you know that it is not going to phone home or do any
nasties. Still, can't have everything I suppose...
-Andrew Marlow