Reverse engineering

ollie lho ollie at sis.com.tw
Wed May 21 03:23:00 CEST 2003


On Wed, 2003-05-21 at 13:48, Steve Gehlbach wrote:
> ollie lho wrote:
> 
> > 
> > If you are tracing the code with some kind of debugger rather than 
> > disassembly the binary image, does it matter if the image is encrypted ?
> 
> I guess it depends on why it is encrypted, and why you are tracing it. 
> Encryption for copy protection, and access protection (ie movies and 
> e-books), is covered by the DMCA.  The language of the law is 
> "circumvention", which basically means getting around the protection 
> mechanism, and I don't think it matters how you do that, tracing, 
> decrypting, whatever.  There is an exception for reverse engineering for 
> the purpose of developing interoperable software.  For the case of a 
> BIOS, one is developing interoperable software so it seems to be an 
> exception, if the BIOS is encrypted (as in the Xbox).
> 

Then why a DVD player with DeCSS not a "interoperatable" software ?

-- 
ollie lho <ollie at sis.com.tw>




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