Re: A89: AU 2.00 "bug" explanations


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Re: A89: AU 2.00 "bug" explanations




> Security based on secrecy is no security at all.  It would take less then
5
> minutes for someone to run AU through a decompiler and get the complete
> source code (decompiling works much better in asm then in C).  The inner
> workings of your program are very easy to access and if that's all someone
> needs to create a virus, then the issue should be reported to TI, along
> with the example code.  This is standard pratice in the computer industry
> and it's that way for a reason.

Have you ever actually decompiled anything? After all the optomizations a68k
makes for you and the comments and label names gone, it's still pretty much
unintelligible.  A68k will actually change the order of sections of code
(determined by the space between two BRAs, guaranteeing that it won't mess
up something important) and change commands such as ADD to ADDA/ADDI/ADDQ as
well as adding the .B/.W/.L to the end of everything.  Trying to find some
sections of code with all the labels (say, START:, CHANGEX:, and CHANGEY:)
replaced by LABEL_1, LABEL_2, LABEL_3, etc. - and not in the same order as
they orginally were - is a disaster.  No comments, either.  Try compiling
some code and decompiling it, then compare - you'll see what I mean.

My first experience in decompiling was trying to remove the 45-second pause
before
playing in the demo version of Asteroids: 2040 (the author wanted $1) for
the full version.  After decompiling the code, I managed to find the area
that the pasue loop was in through the placement of the "this is shareware
yada yada yada" message and deleted it - but the stupid disassembler gave me
two commands which TASM wouldn't accept back. . .