Cython Reverse Engineering?

[Shalom Rav]

Is it easy / much easier to reverse engineer compiled cython code,
than say to c++ code?

Is there anything that can be done to make cython code more
'resistable' to reverse engineering?

[Stefan Behnel]

Shalom Rav, 01.04.2011 00:36:

> Is it easy / much easier to reverse engineer compiled cython code,
> than say to c++ code?

Never tried it, but I would expect that both are about equally tricky for a
human. Potentially, reverse engineering Cython code could be easier to
reverse engineer automatically than manually written code as it obviously
follows generation patterns.

But I think it needs to be tried to get a justified answer.

> Is there anything that can be done to make cython code more
> 'resistable' to reverse engineering?

If you are thinking of code obfuscation, this has never been a goal of the
Cython project (and it never will be).

Stefan

[Shalom Rav]

Stefan,

>
> If you are thinking of code obfuscation, this has never been a goal of the
> Cython project (and it never will be).
>

This makes perfect sense. The question is, is there anything that can
be done to make the code 'more complicated' for reverse engineering?
Shall comments be removed? other tactics?

[Lisandro Dalcin]

On 31 March 2011 21:31, Shalom Rav <csharppl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Stefan,
>
>>
>> If you are thinking of code obfuscation, this has never been a goal of the
>> Cython project (and it never will be).
>>
>
> This makes perfect sense. The question is, is there anything that can
> be done to make the code 'more complicated' for reverse engineering?
> Shall comments be removed? other tactics?
>

Optimizing compilers will add extra fuzziness, not need at all to
remove code, etc... Take into account that Cython code calls the
Python C/API, this API do have public symbols with very readable
names. If you manage to run a code obfuscator in core Python sources
and build a custom binary (no idea how this could work, the generator
should also output a header plenty of #defines for you to #include),
then I think the whole stack will be harder to reverse-eng...

> On Mar 31, 8:18 pm, Stefan Behnel <stefan...@behnel.de> wrote:
>> Shalom Rav, 01.04.2011 00:36:
>>
>> > Is it easy / much easier to reverse engineer compiled cython code,
>> > than say to c++ code?
>>
>> Never tried it, but I would expect that both are about equally tricky for a
>> human. Potentially, reverse engineering Cython code could be easier to
>> reverse engineer automatically than manually written code as it obviously
>> follows generation patterns.
>>
>> But I think it needs to be tried to get a justified answer.
>>
>> > Is there anything that can be done to make cython code more
>> > 'resistable' to reverse engineering?
>>
>> If you are thinking of code obfuscation, this has never been a goal of the
>> Cython project (and it never will be).
>>
>> Stefan

--
Lisandro Dalcin
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