Protect Python Source

[Christian Tismer]

Lemniscate wrote:
> Christian Tismer <tismer at tismer.com> wrote in message news:<mailman.1036145342.13403.python-list at python.org>...
> 
>>Using the Installer gives you the advantage that
>>no source code can be seen and even no bytecode
>>is visible in the first place. It is of course ungzipped
>>from the executable at execution time, but there are
>>no visible files, it is in memory, only.
> 
> 
> Actually, this isn't quite true.  If you open the exe generated by the
> Installer with a text editing program (even NotePad works), your code
> is visible in the code (just do a search for you imports or a def
> statement and you'll find it. 

Only if you turned off the compression.
I just ran my 3.5 mb generated .exe through
a cygwin strings command, and nothing readable
was a little stuff from the installer and
from the zlib.

Did you add your scripts and modules using plain
PYSOURCE or PYMODULE types?
They should of course all end up in a PYZ type
that makes them unreadable by compression.

> Usually, I find it in either the dead
> center of the file, or towards the end of the file.  In fact, if you
> cut and paste, you will have your code back (I've actually done this
> before when my wife deleted some of my source back-ups, and it works
> perfectly). 

This still works with my .exe as well, given that I add the
sources by hand, too. Usually, only the real scripts are
in source form, al other stuff is in modules, which are
added as .pyc files. So I really wonder how you used
the installer ???

> For some interesting reading (and some nice laughs along the way),
> check out: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=obfuscation&meta=group%3Dcomp.lang.python.*

That's really funny!
Great idea, to just generate Perl :-)

ciao - chrid

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