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'Protecting' Perl Code?

Posted by Cliff on from the security-through-obfuscation dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "Ok, so here is the scenario: my company has some software that is used internally and it is written in Perl. We now need to put this code on a server that has 'public' access (it's a university machine). We provide root access to the system for the purpose of learning, but we need to keep the code from being viewed or edited. Is there anything to do besides the 'perl2exe' and the ActiveState compiler? How effective are those really at protecting code?"

1 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. Dr. Greene once said by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You could scambling the code un-readable uncompiled.

    One of my professors told me a story about how he once worked with a guy that mantained a project. To help keep his job he would always submit the code scrambled with all names of variables and functions seemingly meaningless. He showed him this one day and asked, "How can you read this?" He said, "I can't. I write the code, put the source through a filter program and then submit the result. If they need someone to fix it or read it or improve it, they will have to go through me." This was back in the early 80's.