Obfuscating Ruby Code

Lothar Scholz [mailto:mailinglists@scriptolutions.com]:

Hello Will,

Just for a little bit of fun, I wrote a dumb obfuscator. It
takes a ruby script and converts it to a C integer array with the
ASCII values increased by array size and the letter's index in
the array. This is then included in a C source file. This then
converts the code back to a char array in dynamically allocated
memory and evaluates it with rb_eval_string_protect.

[...]

This is not obfuscated ruby. As i said it takes 3 min to add the
following 4 c lines into the parse.c file

Actually, yes, it is. Obfuscated != pirate-proof. Obfuscated != hard
protection. Obfuscated simply means that it's just a bit harder to
deal with for the casual person -- and *this* is all that the OP
wanted in the first place.

It's not necessary to have something by cryptographically secure
before it is considered acceptable for a person's needs, as long as
the limitations of the approach are understood. Obfuscation isn't
security, but it sure helps prevent your average user from doing
something they shouldn't.

-austin

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--
austin ziegler * austin.ziegler@evault.com