Re: Reverse engineering binary coded TCL scripts

From: Gerald W. Lester (Gerald.Lester_at_cox.net)
Date: 08/09/04 

Date: Mon, 09 Aug 2004 14:30:43 -0500

Donal K. Fellows wrote:

> hellomondo2003@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> Interesting. I would hope that the good people at ActiveState have
>> taken measures to make compilation a one way process.
>
>
> Well, it can't be made completely one-way because a computer has to
> eventually work out what it is to execute. This means that it is at
> least theoretically possible to reverse-engineer *any* encrypted encoded
> binary and get back something that is recognizably similar to the
> original source code. But not necessarily easy at all...

That includes compiled languages such as Fortran and Pascal.

Back in college a couple of us reversed a Fortran program (only way to
learn how to get a perfect score in Advent).

At my first job I did it to a Pascal program (disk crash on a disk that was
not being backed up (Oh, we forgot to add the new disks to the backup set)).

I would assume that any person worth their salt with a Computer Science
degree could reverse it given enough time -- That being said, I suspect it
would be easier/faster in this case to rewrite, both those cases were
complete programs. 

-- 
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| Gerald W. Lester               | "The man who fights for his ideals is |
| Gerald.Lester@cox.net          |  the man who is alive." -- Cervantes  |
+--------------------------------+---------------------------------------+

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