IMO Obscurity is at least as effective as the attacker’s inability to locate the resource, but I don’t recommend that being your only defense for everything of course.
That being said, you’re absolutely right when you look at it that way. If reverse engineering or copying ASM isn’t out of the question, then IMO all bets are off. Even closed source proprietary programs are not immune from that.
But in the general sense of people casually copy/pasting source code, I think the only defense is not having source available in the first place.
You can copy binary code. Just as easy as source code.
It is only when running on a different architecture it gets a bit more complex.
And give the binary is directly translatable by software. Not hugely more complex for any company of the size you are unwilling to fight in court over open source code.
Sorry but no you are wrong. Hading the source in no way makes code harder to copy. Its how most of us hacked into games in the 1990s.
After all binary code is just simpler instruction set that takes very very minimal effort to convert into assembly language. And can be read by many even without that effort.
Its hardly a secret encrypted format. (Unless you are also designing your own hardware and not letting anyone see that. )
I think we majorly disagree on the definition of “harder” and “just as easy” here. I don’t consider that making me “wrong”, I consider it a difference of opinion. One could argue that it is indeed harder to copy assembly code especially when you do not understand it, or like you contradictingly already stated, when the architecture differs. I was speaking in the context of “the general sense of people casually copy/pasting source code” which I was also implying that meant that those people also did not easily understand assembly already. Sorry for the confusion.
The effectiveness of obscurity in operations security depends on whether the obscurity lives on top of other good security practices, or if it is being used alone. When used as an independent layer, obscurity is considered a valid security tool.
IMO Obscurity is at least as effective as the attacker’s inability to locate the resource, but I don’t recommend that being your only defense for everything of course.
That being said, you’re absolutely right when you look at it that way. If reverse engineering or copying ASM isn’t out of the question, then IMO all bets are off. Even closed source proprietary programs are not immune from that.
But in the general sense of people casually copy/pasting source code, I think the only defense is not having source available in the first place.
You can copy binary code. Just as easy as source code.
It is only when running on a different architecture it gets a bit more complex.
And give the binary is directly translatable by software. Not hugely more complex for any company of the size you are unwilling to fight in court over open source code.
Sorry but no you are wrong. Hading the source in no way makes code harder to copy. Its how most of us hacked into games in the 1990s.
After all binary code is just simpler instruction set that takes very very minimal effort to convert into assembly language. And can be read by many even without that effort.
Its hardly a secret encrypted format. (Unless you are also designing your own hardware and not letting anyone see that. )
I think we majorly disagree on the definition of “harder” and “just as easy” here. I don’t consider that making me “wrong”, I consider it a difference of opinion. One could argue that it is indeed harder to copy assembly code especially when you do not understand it, or like you contradictingly already stated, when the architecture differs. I was speaking in the context of “the general sense of people casually copy/pasting source code” which I was also implying that meant that those people also did not easily understand assembly already. Sorry for the confusion.