Protecting stacks

[J. Landman Gay]

On 11/4/12 4:03 PM, Alejandro Tejada wrote:

> But, What is your personal conclusion
> about the methods proposed to protect
> stacks?
>
> Safe or Not?

I think it depends on how paranoid you need to be. If we disregard 
determined hackers who have infinite amounts of time, then I think it is 
possible to reasonably lock down a standalone so that the content and 
scripts can't be copied. Password-protecting the mainstack (and 
substacks) will prevent anyone seeing the scripts, property values, and 
other content if the stack is opened in a text editor. If all fields are 
locked and have tranversalOn and auto-hiliting false, and if there is no 
copy item in the menus, then field text cannot be copied and pasted into 
another app. (It may be enough to simply not allow a "copy" menu item.) 
Images or whole cards can always be reproduced with a screenshot and 
there is no way to prevent that, but that is a universal problem for any 
app.

If you want to protect a stack that isn't a standalone, then the 
encryption idea should work, since only the mainstack knows how to 
decrypt the stack. The stack could not be opened with a copy of 
LiveCode. The stacks should also have all their fields and menus locked 
down so that text can't be copied. If there is no "copy" menu item, then 
objects and images couldn't be copied either.

Usually that's as safe as I need to be. Others may have different 
requirements.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com