why free?

[David GLAUDE]

I am talking about mysefl not about a dedicated hacker. You see I am 
talking about the average programmer that think he will get more from 
his hardware, not a well organise internationnal team of free software 
programer that review each other code and have some kind of ethic. ;-)

I never create software cracks for proprietary software, but I do 
occasionaly modify free software to fit my need.

Software crack are most of the time done to bypass the licence scheme, 
not to enhance the software to do thing dangerous, not permited, that 
enable unintended use.

Another point is that it would be illegal to do it where modifying a 
free software is not per se.

By fucking with a military radar with the help of the hardware vendor is 
different from bypassing the security put in place by the hardware vendor.

The vendor might be liable for helping me doing it.

So there is a real interest for the vendor and the military industry to 
have some kind of software that are at least legaly protected from 
tinkering.

Are you in favor of freely accessible gun like in the US or do you 
prefer some restriction like in europe?
What if software are able to kill?

David GLAUDE

Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-07-19 at 00:11 +0200, David GLAUDE wrote:
> 
>>Let's say that *I* will be more *dangerous* having access to the code and 
>>beeing able to recompile after changing the power adjust function than 
>>changing random bytes with an hexadecimal editor into the HAL binary file.
>>
>>It does not make security by obscurity less false or fake, but it is 
>>obvious that if *I* poke into a binary there are less chances that *I* will 
>>optain the expected goal (especially if the binary is CRC protected 
>>against peaple like *me*. ;-)
> 
> Proprietary software cracks exist since a lot of time, so your claims
> that tinkering with an hex editor has less chances are not supported by
> facts. Do you think that bypassing hardware keys is esier than a
> software CRC check ?

I am not talking about chances, I am talking about danger.

But yes from a statistical point of view randomly flipping bit (and I am 
an expert in "spontaneous random bit inversion") is less likely to be 
successfull that a carefull modification of the software source code and 
recompilation.