pb decompiler?

[brown...@gmail.com]

I was reading a couple posts in this newsgroup re: pb decompilers…
Some guy had lost his source code and apparently it can be retrieved
using a decompiler. I’ve heard about this for .net, but never for pb.
Am thinking that this could be used to decompile my applications – is
this true? Do I need to be worried about people accessing my source
code?

[Jeremy Lakeman]

Yes, there are tools that could be used to decompile your applications
and produce readable and compilable source code.
Even without the source code, there is a lot of information about your
application that can be extracted from the binaries.

But no, I wouldn't worry about it. Your source code is still covered
by copyright law and whatever agreement you have in place with your
customers.

[Roland Smith [TeamSybase]]

The decompiler mentioned is written by somebody in China and they want US
$2,200 for it.

"Jeremy Lakeman" <jeremy....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5d57b6c2-3828-4688...@d38g2000prn.googlegroups.com...

[Terry Voth [TeamSybase]]

And then, coming from the context of cleaning viruses off of two
machines for friends and family in the last three weeks, there's the
rule of treating your computer like your love life: never willingly
accept into your computer potentially virulent fluids/software from a
source you don't really know or trust. <BG>

Good luck,

Terry and Sequel the thoroughly-disgusted techno-kitten

On 6 Apr 2009 11:59:58 -0700, "Roland Smith [TeamSybase]"
<rsmith_at_trusthss_dot_com> wrote:

*********************************
Build your vocabulary while feeding the hungry
http://www.freerice.com
*********************************
Newsgroup User Manual
=====================
TeamSybase <> Sybase employee
Forums = Peer-to-peer
Forums <> Communication with Sybase
IsNull (AnswerTo (Posting)) can return TRUE
Forums.Moderated = TRUE, so behave or be deleted
*********************************

Sequel's Sandbox: http://www.techno-kitten.com
Home of PBL Peeper, a free PowerBuilder Developer's Toolkit.
Version 4.0.4 now available at the Sandbox
PB Futures updated June 25/2008
See the PB Troubleshooting & Migration Guides at the Sandbox
^ ^
o o
=*=

[Troy]

.Net sdk actually comes with one. ildasm.exe

Obfuscation can mangle assemblies so it doesn't work though. I have not
tried these on PB generated assemblies though.

Troy

[Van]

Hi Roland ,
Did that Chinese guy developed a decomplier for PowerBuilder ? That is
strange!!

Please do confirm I think once paid stealing the source would be easy
(:.....customers can still think that they are un-safe )

Regards ,Van

"Roland Smith [TeamSybase]" <rsmith_at_trusthss_dot_com> wrote in message
news:49da512e@forums-1-dub...

> The decompiler mentioned is written by somebody in China and they want US
> $2,200 for it.
>
> "Jeremy Lakeman" <jeremy....@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:5d57b6c2-3828-4688...@d38g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
> On Apr 6, 11:15 pm, brown.0...@gmail.com wrote:

>> I was reading a couple posts in this newsgroup re: pb decompilers.

>> Some guy had lost his source code and apparently it can be retrieved
>> using a decompiler. I've heard about this for .net, but never for pb.

>> Am thinking that this could be used to decompile my applications - is

[Anatoly Moskovsky]

Hi!
*** Troy wrote:

T> Obfuscation can mangle assemblies so it doesn't work though. I have not
T> tried these on PB generated assemblies though.

There's a native obfuscator for PowerBuilder: http://pb-protect.com/
I did not try it but I've seen a few commercial app/libraries using it.
For example: http://www.catsoft.ch/en/asp/page.aspx?key=catsoftpdf

Bye

[akm...@gmail.com]

Van,
i hear that he has. i think we should be scared about piracy. if they
decompile, and steal the code, they can avoid paying for licences. i
think that if someone develops a decompiler, that must be the reason!

On Apr 7, 9:20 am, "Van" <Vanjacob...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Roland ,
> Did that Chinese guy developed a decomplier for PowerBuilder ? That is
> strange!!
>
> Please do confirm I think once paid stealing the source would be easy
> (:.....customers can still think that they are un-safe )
>
> Regards ,Van
>

> "Roland Smith [TeamSybase]" <rsmith_at_trusthss_dot_com> wrote in messagenews:49da512e@forums-1-dub...

>
> > The decompiler mentioned is written by somebody in China and they want US
> > $2,200 for it.
>

> > "Jeremy Lakeman" <jeremy.lake...@gmail.com> wrote in message

[Roland Smith [TeamSybase]]

I don't know if it has a virus but it does communicate with the author's
server while it is running.

"Terry Voth [TeamSybase]" <seq...@techno-kitten.com> wrote in message
news:d7mkt4da9cdneshr5...@4ax.com...

> And then, coming from the context of cleaning viruses off of two
> machines for friends and family in the last three weeks, there's the
> rule of treating your computer like your love life: never willingly
> accept into your computer potentially virulent fluids/software from a
> source you don't really know or trust. <BG>
>
> Good luck,
>
> Terry and Sequel the thoroughly-disgusted techno-kitten
>
> On 6 Apr 2009 11:59:58 -0700, "Roland Smith [TeamSybase]"
> <rsmith_at_trusthss_dot_com> wrote:
>
>>The decompiler mentioned is written by somebody in China and they want US
>>$2,200 for it.
>>
>>"Jeremy Lakeman" <jeremy....@gmail.com> wrote in message
>>news:5d57b6c2-3828-4688...@d38g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
>>On Apr 6, 11:15 pm, brown.0...@gmail.com wrote:

>>> I was reading a couple posts in this newsgroup re: pb decompilers.

>>> Some guy had lost his source code and apparently it can be retrieved
>>> using a decompiler. I've heard about this for .net, but never for pb.

>>> Am thinking that this could be used to decompile my applications - is

[Roland Smith [TeamSybase]]

My opinion is that anyone willing to steal something would never buy it
anyway.

Same thing with pirated movies or music. People download pirated movies and
watch them because they don't have to pay. If they like the movie or song
enough to part with the cash, they would buy it legally. The entertainment
industries revenues are down because their product sucks, not because
everyone is stealing their product.

What is worrisome is the person who would want to look at your source code
so that they could create their own similar product and compete with you.

"Van" <Vanja...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:49dafec6@forums-1-dub...

[Jeremy Lakeman]

$2,200 per copy is a bit much. I wouldn't charge anywhere near that
much ...

... not that I'm going to.

And to the other posters in this thread, there are other reasons for
writing a decompiler. It is sometimes useful to peak under the hood to
find out what PB is really doing with the code you write.

Along that train of thought, would anyone here have an ethical problem
with a de-compiling utility that did not try to produce compilable
powerscript, but instead produced a kind of assembly representation of
pcode operations?

On Apr 7, 3:59 am, "Roland Smith [TeamSybase]"

<rsmith_at_trusthss_dot_com> wrote:
> The decompiler mentioned is written by somebody in China and they want US
> $2,200 for it.
>

> "Jeremy Lakeman" <jeremy.lake...@gmail.com> wrote in message

[Terry Voth [TeamSybase]]

And, I hope you trust the vendor enough to be doing nothing on your
machine other than what you've asked it to do.

There's one decompiler (I suspect different than the one you've been
talking about) whose signature definitely matches Backdoor.Sdbot,
according to Symantec.

Good luck,

Terry and Sequel the Trojan techno-kitten

On 7 Apr 2009 05:07:20 -0700, "Roland Smith [TeamSybase]"

[Van]

Why not Sybase work on the complier to change the strategy while compling
the code.
<encryption>/</decryption?

In this way , developers can have confidence that what ever the hacker is
doing is 100% non-sense.!!

Regards, Van

"Roland Smith [TeamSybase]" <rsmith_at_trusthss_dot_com> wrote in message

news:49db41b9@forums-1-dub...

[Brad Wery[TeamSybase]]

A form of Reflector for PB?

[Terry Voth [TeamSybase]]

Sybase has already addressed this, and their answer paraphrased is,
which of the half of the new features do you want to ditch in the next
version in order to allocate engineering resources to a goal that is
theoretically impossible? (Remember how "impossible" to crack we were
told HD DVD and BluRay were? <beg>) As long as there is financial
incentive, there will be brilliant people out there willing to crack
whatever road blocks you put in place.

Besides, given the state of PB in the market at the moment, do you
really think it's worth diverting engineering resources away from new,
sellable features?

Good luck,

Terry and Sequel the techno-kitten

*********************************

[Terry Voth [TeamSybase]]

Considering the total cost of employment (salary, health insurance,
facilities, etc...) or the cost of a contractor, that $2,200
represents a week, or at most two weeks, of a developer's time.

Know of any algorithms that take months and years to tweak and get
right and give a competitive advantage that someone wouldn't want to
steal for a week's worth of time? Ethics aside, the capitalistic
choice is obvious.

$2,200 is nothing if you've got something good to decompile.

And, if I read your proposal correctly, something that translates a
compiled algorithm into a pseudo-code that can then be translated into
any language diminishes that value only slightly, if at all. (If the
competition isn't developing in PB, there's no value reduction at all;
PowerScript would have to be translated anyway.) Therefore, I'd
suspect anyone with any valuable intellectual property in their code
would object to this proposal with the same vigor.

JMHO,

Terry and Sequel the techno-kitten

*********************************

[Terry Voth [TeamSybase]]

Well, anything can be decompiled, so this is just a risk of
distributing software. FWIW, if you're in the US, except for
compatibility research, decompiling seems to be a violation of the
DMCA
(http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/appdev/story/0,10801,65532,00.html),
so you've got recourse if you believe it's happened. (I've been asked
to testify in a case like this, as an outside expert.) Making
redistribution and reverse engineering violations of your licensing
agreement may also set you up in a better legal position.

Good luck,

Terry and Sequel the techno-kitten

*********************************

[Van]

Very good , makes sense to me :)

Regards , Van

"Terry Voth [TeamSybase]" <seq...@techno-kitten.com> wrote in message

news:bhomt45k9rv6tm6jn...@4ax.com...

>>> > I was reading a couple posts in this newsgroup re: pb decompilers.

>>> > Some guy had lost his source code and apparently it can be retrieved
>>> > using a decompiler. I've heard about this for .net, but never for pb.

>>> > Am thinking that this could be used to decompile my applications - is

[Arthur Hefti]

That PowerBuilder applications can be decompiled is a fact that most of us
didn't realize until recently. The often-mentioned Chinese decompiler is
very good and creates nice source code from your programs - even the
variable names are the same as in the original source.

This means that our intellectual property is at risk! Of course there are
copyright laws and agreements with customers, but we can't prevent somebody
from decompiling our applications and looking at our code. Or, even worse,
claiming that our code is his code by, for example, changing copyright
information in the source and recompiling the application. I also think that
most of us don't have the ability to fight these people by law in foreign
countries. Even if they're not re-selling the software, they can use it to
crack licenses. This means that someone could get a free trial, crack it,
and then use the program on an unlimited number of posts!

This leads us to consider the use of obfuscation to prevent the theft our
intellectual property. While code can be decompiled, it's very hard (but not
impossible!) to read obfuscated source code. And it wouldn't be impossible
by some who stole the code to claim that he wrote it himself.

In the last couple of weeks, I was a beta-tester for the PowerBuilder
obfuscator PBProtect. It's a program developed by Gian Luca De Bonis,
principal developer of Enable. The obfuscator is located at
http://www.pb-protect.com/. It's quite easy to use and changes your objects,
functions, variables, etc from easy-to-read into strings like
"xpu57kh0kb850ldqf2k". I like it very much and I'm confident that it
protects our code. It also doesn't impact the runtime. I decided to
obfuscate the CATsoftPDF library (http://www.catsoft.ch/catsoftpdf) - ,
which is used to create PDFs from DataWindows - with PBProtect and sell the
obfuscated PBL and not the PBD. I would suggest you give PBProtect a try.
The trial version is available from the WebSite at
http://www.pb-protect.com.

Arthur

"Terry Voth [TeamSybase]" <seq...@techno-kitten.com> wrote in message

news:4dpmt45lbbthav4sa...@4ax.com...

> Well, anything can be decompiled, so this is just a risk of
> distributing software. FWIW, if you're in the US, except for
> compatibility research, decompiling seems to be a violation of the
> DMCA
> (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/appdev/story/0,10801,65532,00.html),
> so you've got recourse if you believe it's happened. (I've been asked
> to testify in a case like this, as an outside expert.) Making
> redistribution and reverse engineering violations of your licensing
> agreement may also set you up in a better legal position.
>
> Good luck,
>
> Terry and Sequel the techno-kitten
>
> On Mon, 6 Apr 2009 07:15:02 -0700 (PDT), brown...@gmail.com wrote:
>

>>I was reading a couple posts in this newsgroup re: pb decompilers.

>>Some guy had lost his source code and apparently it can be retrieved
>>using a decompiler. I've heard about this for .net, but never for pb.

>>Am thinking that this could be used to decompile my applications - is

[Ken Balakrishnan]

I prefer to obfuscate my apps the old-fashioned way, by writing spaghetti
code.

Ken

"Arthur Hefti" <art...@catsoft.ch> wrote in message
news:49dd70c6@forums-1-dub...