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From: rnovak@mips.com (Robert E. Novak)
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Subject: Re: Questions, concerns about ANDF
Keywords: public key encryption
Message-ID: <3894@ima.ima.isc.com>
Date: 11 May 89 20:18:13 GMT
References: <3850@ima.ima.isc.com> <3875@ima.ima.isc.com>
Sender: compilers-sender@ima.ima.isc.com
Reply-To: rnovak@mips.com (Robert E. Novak)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 27
Approved: compilers@ima.UUCP

Why don't we just ship encrypted source code as the ANDF?

The main purpose of an ANDF is to allow vendors to ship some machine
independent form of their program that can be installed on a machine.  Thus
we can have true shrink wrap software.  The vendors have proprietary
algorthms locked up in their source code, hence the desire to not ship the
source.  Yet, almost any ANDF would be in such a form that uncompiling an
ANDF back to source code would be fairly simple.

Sooo... let's ship the source using public key encryption where the
compilers are built by 'trusted' manufacturers that will decrypt and
compile the source code and install it, without ever revealing the source
code.  Decryption or intercepting the compiler halfway through is
guaranteed to be more difficult than uncompiling an ANDF.
-- 
Robert E. Novak                                     MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
{ames,decwrl,pyramid}!mips!rnovak      928 E. Arques Ave.  Sunnyvale, CA  94086
rnovak@admin.mips.COM (rnovak%mips.COM@ames.arc.nasa.gov)       +1 408 991-0402
[Seems to me that it's unlikely that you could create such a scheme that wasn't
fairly easy to reverse engineer.  Public key encryption assumes that the
decryption key is not public, but in this case you'd be shipping it in every
copy of the compiler.  -John]
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