Re: Reverse-Engineering Bytecode: A Possible Commercial Objection To O'Caml

["Michael Donat" <donat@intergate.bc.ca>]

>How can companies protect their bytecode, at least their modules, from
reverse
>engineering?


I believe that if someone has the desire to reverse engineer OCaml bytecode
someone will also have these other capabilities:

1) Be able to reverse engineer native code.
2) Be able to run the OCaml bytecode system in a debugger, stop after your
bytecode was decrypted, and reverse engineer it from there.

I don't see a benefit in having an OCaml module encryption system.

If you want to encrypt important portions of your app, you might consider
producing your own bytecode system. The main benefit of this approach is
that your bytecode is private, thus dramatically intensifying the effort
required to reverse engineer. I think this would be a much more effective
use of time than implementing an OCaml module encryption system.

Michael Donat