Serious concerns about people easily decompiling code
by Wolf Dreamer · in Torque Game Engine · 09/07/2006 (4:39 am) · 6 replies
Since you can buy a license that allows you to view all of the source code, I was wondering how easy it was for someone to make a program that would allow them to decompile the code from other people's games.
The way Torque scripts are set up, it should be fairly easy.
Is that a serious problem?
The way Torque scripts are set up, it should be fairly easy.
Is that a serious problem?
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#2
No. There are plenty of options for asset encryption. Also, if you had a license and were really worried about it, it's not like it takes much effort to change the .dso format (or in fact any of the Torque specific file formats) to be incompatible with stock Torque.
UPX isn't meant to help protect against anything. It's meant to compress the executable. UPX compressed executables have a string in that identifies they're using UPX (which the UPX license forbids removal of), and to decompress them is as simple as downloading UPX and doing upx -d myexe.exe
09/07/2006 (5:17 am)
Quote:
The way Torque scripts are set up, it should be fairly easy.
Is that a serious problem?
No. There are plenty of options for asset encryption. Also, if you had a license and were really worried about it, it's not like it takes much effort to change the .dso format (or in fact any of the Torque specific file formats) to be incompatible with stock Torque.
Quote:If you're worried about the game source you can use an executable packer like UPX to help protect against reverse-engineering, I'm not sure how well though.
UPX isn't meant to help protect against anything. It's meant to compress the executable. UPX compressed executables have a string in that identifies they're using UPX (which the UPX license forbids removal of), and to decompress them is as simple as downloading UPX and doing upx -d myexe.exe
#3
There's nothing necessarily stopping someone writing a decompiler for current DSOs, but then, there's nothing stopping anyone single stepping your assembly on any other executable either, whether it's torque or maya.
Honestly: anytime that you install on someone's machine:
1) Some encrypted information
2) a program that can decrypt that information
3) the key that the program that decrpyts the information needs
then anyone sufficient determined can get your information in a decrypted format, and there is *nothing* you can do about this. It's mostly a question of who and what qualifies as "sufficiently determined"; which presumably is a factor of the worthiness of your information. Most of the time people don't even need all three of these items.
Pat Wilson wrote a resource called Protecting your art assets with encryption which may be of interest.
Gary (-;
09/07/2006 (1:01 pm)
It all depends on what you mean by a "serious problem".There's nothing necessarily stopping someone writing a decompiler for current DSOs, but then, there's nothing stopping anyone single stepping your assembly on any other executable either, whether it's torque or maya.
Honestly: anytime that you install on someone's machine:
1) Some encrypted information
2) a program that can decrypt that information
3) the key that the program that decrpyts the information needs
then anyone sufficient determined can get your information in a decrypted format, and there is *nothing* you can do about this. It's mostly a question of who and what qualifies as "sufficiently determined"; which presumably is a factor of the worthiness of your information. Most of the time people don't even need all three of these items.
Pat Wilson wrote a resource called Protecting your art assets with encryption which may be of interest.
Gary (-;
#4
09/07/2006 (5:46 pm)
That link won't work for me.Quote:
The contents of this resource is only available to owners of the products listed below.
If you do own one of these products please make sure you are signed in to the site.
#5
We've had 19,021 people register our game. There have been significantly more people who have downloaded and played the single player version without registering.
Do I have serious concerns about people easily decompiling the code? Not at all...
09/07/2006 (6:09 pm)
We use TGE (where full source can be had for $100) and a pile of Open Source technologies where the source code is available for free. We've also published a fair amount of the source code in our dedicated world server. We've had 19,021 people register our game. There have been significantly more people who have downloaded and played the single player version without registering.
Do I have serious concerns about people easily decompiling the code? Not at all...
#6
09/07/2006 (6:14 pm)
An excellent design philosophy is to pretend that your entire codebase is somehow going to end up posted somewhere on the internet. 
Torque 3D Owner iHugMedia
If you're worried about the game source you can use an executable packer like UPX to help protect against reverse-engineering, I'm not sure how well though.