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From: mouse@LIGHTNING.MCRCIM.MCGILL.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  Shared libs with X, Frame (Was: Re: Xkernel)
Message-ID: <9012200708.AA08313@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 20 Dec 90 07:08:42 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

> The reason for Frame's using statically linked binaries is probably
> that they want to prevent against someone getting smart and breaking
> their license control scheme by `patching' libc.so.  [...by fudging
> the return from gethostid()...]

Even that is pretty simple to fudge, given what you can do with ptrace
under 4.1.  Look at trace(1) and ptrace(3) and tell me how tough it
would be to write a trace(1)-like program that just hacks gethostid()
calls...not that that's all you'd need to do a proper copy-protect
breaker, but it's most of it.  (I have a sort of side contest going
with another person here - each of us is trying to produce a
copy-protected binary the other can't break.  Not much has happened
yet, but it's made me look at the available tools....)

					der Mouse

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