C++ Intellectual Property Protection/Anti-Reversing

Question

I've seen a lot of discussion on here about copy protection. I am more interested in anti-reversing and IP protection.

There are solutions such as Safenet and HASP that claim to encrypt the binary, but are these protected from reversing when used with a valid key?

What kinds of strategies can be used to obfuscate code and throw off reversers? Are there any decent commercial implementations out there?

I know most protection schemes can be cracked, but the goal here is to delay the ability to reverse the software in question, and make it much more blatant if another company tries to implement these methods.

Answer 1

There are solutions such as Safenet and HASP that claim to encrypt the binary, but are these protected from reversing when used with a valid key?

No. A dedicated reverse engineer can decrypt it, because the operating system has to be able to decrypt it in order to run it.

Personally, I wouldn't worry. Admittedly I don't know anything about your business, but it seems to me that reverse engineering C++ is relatively difficult compared to languages like Java or .NET. That will be enough protection to see off all but the most determined attackers.

However, a determined attacker will always be able to get past whatever you implement, because at some point it has to be turned into a bunch of CPU instructions and executed. You can't prevent them from reading that.

But that's a lot of effort for a non-trivial program. It seems a lot more likely to me that somebody might just create a competitor after seeing your program in action (or even just from your marketing material). It's probably easier than trying to reverse engineer yours, and avoids any potential legal issues. That isn't something you can (or should) prevent.