Famous at last, though not in the best way

[Mike Kerner]

Now that we're off in the weeds, yes, there are not just disassemblers, but
decompilers as well, and there have been for 40 years.  I think I used my
first one on an Apple ][.

The thing with those tools is that you don't get the variable names, or
comments, or the exact control structures, etc., because they don't know
what the author was trying to do (and often they aren't sure what language
- computer or human) the code was written in, although depending on the
platform, often humans can figure that part out.  If you run an application
through a decompiler/disassembler, you get something that if you recompile
it will work, but it is not a road map to what the person was thinking,
because optimizing compilers in particular take all sorts of liberties with
the original source to get an executable that is smaller and/or runs faster.

Even though you get source (and at least in theory can get source in
whatever source language you want), that doesn't save you a lot of time.
HOWEVER, if the code is just encrypted, it is far, far easier to get to
back to what the author is really doing.

Stuxnet, for instance, is a binary that isn't particularly large, but the
malware experts have been trying for years to decipher all of it, and they
have not, yet.


On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Richard Gaskin <ambassador at fourthworld.com
> wrote:

> Mike Kerner wrote:
>
>> See thread from other list - we had static compilation of HC stacks and
>> projects back in the 80's and early 90's with Heizer Software's CompileIt!
>> and Double-XX! (the exclamation points were part of the name).
>>
>
> Those were clever, but a LOT of work to attempt to use well.  Still,
> compilation could be done, but I'd sooner see it pursued for the
> performance gain than the perceived security benefit.
>
> While it's true that a disassembler wouldn't be able to reconstruct the
> LiveCode source (yet), modern disassemblers can produce readable C, some
> even C#, so the seeming security is only a matter of degrees.
>
>
> --
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World
>  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
>  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
>  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys
>
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