Encoding, encryption obfuscation and more...

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alex.barylski
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Encoding, encryption obfuscation and more...

Post by alex.barylski »

None really protect you at PHP level because most of what can be done can be easily un-done using various tools...

Got me thinking today...the most value part of your software is it's architecture (atleast for me) it's what allows me to quickly and easily implement features faster and better than competitors. Function level stuff is usually pretty easy to unwind once the idea is understood a solution is known...

I wonder, if there is a way to run an application through the PHP engine and have it dump everything into a single index.php (minus external resources (images, etc).

Can we start a disscussion on the manual steps one might take to "compile" his applicaiton into such a beast? I figure expanding of classes and memebrs into various name-mangled globals would be a good step in the right direction as classes are a major part of an applications overall readbility and architecture.

It's easy to sift through organized classes and quickly gain insight into how to do things (and maybe hot to better do things) but if you were stuck with a single massive module with mangled names and ugly globals, I bet you would give up sooner and just start from scratch - at least I would.

I'm not talking encoding or obfuscating (which I define as simply renaming variables, removing comments, whitespace, etc) but changing the very architecture of the application from an organzied, dynamic engine, into a monolithic beast. Taking high level code and converting it to the lowest level possible. It is, in fact this advantage that traditional compiled programs have. It's not the binary nature of the program, but how the code is converted from high level to lowest level, which makes unwinding a binary Windows app so damn difficult and pointless for the most part.

So, considering PHP as the environment, what are some steps or processes which one could carry out to "compile" their code into a lower level of undersdtanding...

Cheers :)
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Kieran Huggins
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Post by Kieran Huggins »

As long as everything was in an MVC pattern I could see it working - I think it would kill some procedural apps though.

I like it!
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Ambush Commander
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Post by Ambush Commander »

The way I see it, this would work nicely until you hit conditional includes. But definitely possible.
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