From: tim_one at email.msn.com (Tim Peters)
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999 05:20:02 GMT
Subject: restore sources from PYC [Q]
In-Reply-To: <37177D8E.FF43BF65@bigfoot.com>
References: <37177D8E.FF43BF65@bigfoot.com>
Message-ID: <000801be8891$f238d980$ee9e2299@tim>
X-UID: 1125                                                  

[Hoon Yoon]
> What happens if you do NOT want your pyc codes to be reverse
> engineered?

You would have to add a layer of encryption to the .pyc files, and
decryption to the interpreter.  I'm sure the U.S. govt would be delighted to
help <wink>.

> Can you prevent someone from doing this type of rev eng?

Nope.  You can strive to make it more difficult, but you can't stop it.

> Some members in my IT committee always have a problem with this
> ability and often used as excuse to kill any new tech adoption.

How do they feel about old tech?  Like, say, C or C++?  It's no great
achievement to reverse-engineer algorithms from a binary native machine-code
distribution either; in fact, there are a thousand people who can read Intel
machine code in their sleep for everyone who can reverse-engineer .pyc files
<wink>.

unless-you-can-hide-your-code-from-the-cpu-a-human-can-
   watch-it-work-too-ly y'rs  - tim