SWF protection – SWF Protector 3.0 review
With rising problem of SWF reverse engineering, I was looking for a simple tool that does SWF protection. There are variety of tools out there, but one got the hold of my eye, so I decided to do a little testing. Not that I have something to hide, as I usually write GPL code, but when I do it for clients, then it is reasonable to mess up some sensitive code parts.
That tool is SWF Protector 3.0 which has nice interface and it is very simple to use.
According to author, it provides unbreakable protection for reverse engineering. I do not believe that, as everyting is breakable sooner or later, but for now it does the job good. It has two levels of protection, for Actionscript 2, for which I do not care about as I don’t use AS2, and two for AS3: Obfuscate and Protect.
Obfuscate does not protect SWF from decompressing and reverse engineering, but it really messes up code beyond readable. Protect protects from reverse engineering completely. Good thing is that default setting is to do both at once. However, since they increase size of the file, if size of SWF is really important, you can use one or another, on all or some files in package.
I have tested it with few of my projects and it did increase sizes of files for about 15% to 25% (not same for every project), but what is important is that there is no noticable decrease of performance. I must say that I am not an expert in cracking, hacking and reverse engineering, but I have tried a few tools I found on the net, and none could do it. They just give an error. For now, at least. Since I have not tested all I could find, I cannot give precise response, but it does the job.
Interface is pretty simple. There are Simple and Advanced tabs, where you are asked to load SWF file(s) that need(s) to be protected. On simple tab you can protect selected or all files in list. That does the job simply and swiftly. On advanced tab, you can choose to protect and/or obfuscate file by file that is included in package, all or none. Great if you need to keep file small and control exactly what will be protected.
I do have some remarks of a things that I didn’t like. Mostly UI kind, so here they are:
1. When you load a file on one tab, changing tab will not keep that file, but will ask you to select one from disk.
2. In advanced tab, you cannot “select” a file. Even though it is not necessary as every one of them have two checkboxes on the right side, looks unnatural.
3. In same tab, when looking at file listing, you can expand or contract a group, but you cannot expand or contract all at one click.
4. Couldn’t find any settings. I do not know if it exists or is it designed to have none, but I would like to set some defaults, like initial directory for searching files, protection modes, what application to execute when play button is pressed, etc.
5. Command line execution with parameters would be more than useful.
Those are things that in my opinion would make application a killer, but this way is also useful. They don’t undermine general impression.
SWF Protector 3.0 comes for Windows, Linux and Mac.
You can find more information on their official site: http://www.dcomsoft.com/
