Encoded PHP

I Didn't Know You Could Do This

[cmarshall]

I was looking at a commercial product, and looked at the specs. Standard PHP (4.2.1 and up), etc.

I inquired about whether or not they had a PHP API that I could use to customize it, and was informed that the PHP is "encoded."

I didn't realize this was possible. Can someone enlighten me as to how this is done?

[willybfriendly]

There are several packages that claim to encode/obfuscate php. I think the original was the Zend encoder, but when I went searching I found this

Zend Guard (formerly Zend Encoder) protects your applications from reverse engineering, unauthorized customization by providing encoding and obfuscation. It further protects from unlicensed use and redistribution by providing comprehensive licensing support. This combined functionality makes software distribution worry free.

[cmarshall]

Zend Encoder

That's the one. I'll have to check it out a bit more.

It's probably a dealbreaker for me. I don't like the idea of "black box" code executing on my server (besides the huge stacks of server code itself). I'm pretty much a control freak.

[henry0]

IonCube does the same.

But do not worry about the encoded block/s
Most of the time it only regards some sort of config and license #
Think in MS mode, it protects against dupes and unauthorized portability

I use one of those with a very decent shopping cart
if I need to run both a live site and a dupe on dev server, I then just let them know and both IP are registered.

If it's not open src then one needs to protect its intellectual property.

[cmarshall]

Got it. Thanks.

I'm used to using compiled code to protect intellectual property. I worry about overhead introduced by the encoder; not just security.

I've recently set up my first VPS, and I'm getting a real eyeful of how much I need to worry about security. I now have "friends" from all over the world. Why, just last night, my new friend Andrei Kudhacu from Romania tried to contact me over 3,000 times! If he'd tried calling me something other than "root," he may have had more luck.

I also like to heavily theme my sites. These people use Smarty for theming, which I don't like.

I suspect that I'll take an OSS project and adapt that. Bit more work, but I'll feel a great deal more comfortable.