Comments on: Slides from my Flash on the Beach session on decompiling SWFs

By: jonnymac blog

jonnymac blog — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 23:33:35 +0000

Flash on the Beach 08 / Day 3 / Sessions and Wrap Up…

Flash on the Beach 2008, Brighton, UK – Day Three
October 1, 2008
Ben Stucki – Advanced Flexing for Flash Developers
Seb Lee-Delisle – Papervision3D Simplified
Doug McCune – Steal this code: Decompiling SWFs for fun and profit
Koen de Weggheleire – Pla…

By: James Arnold

James Arnold — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:31:13 +0000

Thanks for referring to Nitro-LM as an option for Encryption maybe your IPod Nano chances just went up.

By: David Bigelow

David Bigelow — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 14:21:19 +0000

Doug -

As usual you nailed the subject perfectly.

We all should know that no security system is perfect – everything can be broken with enough time and effort. However, as you pointed out in your presentation, one of the safest things to do is separate the protection components from the application. We have found this to be EXTREMELY beneficial in protecting not just the licensing of a solution – but also protecting the core know-how within the Application.

Thanks for picking up on that fundamental. It is amazing how many people “don’t” get that aspect of protecting software.

NOTE TO EVERYONE: There is no such thing as “ethical” hacking… If people want to know how other people do things – go to a 360|Flex conference and talk to the people that wrote them. (or buy Doug’s book) It is amazing how open people are to helping each other in this community (a good thing).

By: Andrew Westberg

Andrew Westberg — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 12:28:53 +0000

Sometime, I’ll have to have you sign an NDA and see how far you get in cracking the SLI NitroLM tools just for curiosity’s sake. I appreciated the mention.

By: Colette

Colette — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 14:42:51 +0000

Just downloaded the slides and wanted to say thanks for a great session at FOTB – it was definitely one of my favorites – I’ve taken away some knowledge I can really use and hope to learn more from. Cheers!

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 00:19:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure the session wasn’t recorded. At FOTB they only seemed to be recording the presentations on the biggest stage, and I’m not sure if those are even going to be made available or not. In my case it might be best that it wasn’t recorded, seeing as I pulled up various bits and pieces of decompiled apps and talked pretty frankly about specific applications and libraries I’ve decompiled

Maybe I’ll try to give this talk at a local user group meeting or something and post a recording of that, I’ll see if I can work something out.

By: Rostislav

Rostislav — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:35:55 +0000

Good job man, it was the best development session that I was able to see at the conference.

By: David Arno

David Arno — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:34:21 +0000

Hi Doug,

I was at your session. Sadly I didn’t sit right at the very front, so didn’t get a copy of your book. So I hated your session

In reality, I actually thought it was the second best presentation of the whole three days. I’m a flex developer who just doesn’t get Flash Pro and all the art-farty crap that designers come up with. So your code-only session was great. The best session was Mark Anders’ one on Flex 4 and Thermo BTW, so don’t feel bad that you weren’t best.

By: marc

marc — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:26:49 +0000

Wow, looks it was a very interesting presentation… did FOTB record it? It is/will be accessible somehow?

By: Derrick

Derrick — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 02:03:33 +0000

Great slides Doug, same thing I always tell clients when they ask about swfs, security and hiding code. “It’s on the internet, people will get it, deal with it”. Unfortunately the only way to really deal with people stealing code is to sick lawyers on them. Better off to just create a kick butt app, get the jump on everyone and then keep pushing while everyone plays catch up.