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On 3/30/06, John Lam <drjflam / gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's actually the other way around - can the author of the program trust
> the
> user of the program? Think about a corporate environment where you're
> worried about employees hacking your system. In today's SOX compliance
> driven world it's not an unreasonable thing to worry about.
>
> DRM can be used for "good" or "evil". In a corporate setting, the user
> doesn't own the computer - it's the company's property. So in that case,
> the
> company should be able to define what can and cannot execute on the
> machine.
> So while *today* this isn't a reasonable expectation, in the future having
> the ability to lock down a machine so that it only executes code that was
> signed by an approved list of certificate holders seems like a really good
> way to avoid problems like trusted insiders hacking your system.


Given that you're bridging to .NET could you use that to your advantage?  Do
some sort of a hash, or simple signature of the ruby code, which gets passed
through the bridge, and then let .NET handle that part.  Hmm...more random
using here...

What if you took the ruby code, and compiled it into a .NET exe as an
embedded resource (far from secure, but it would allow you to use strong
name keys or something similar on the entire assembly) then use a generic
Main function that either embeds a ruby interpreter, or 'forks' one out to
call the code? I realize this isn't much different than exerb or the like,
but being in a .NET assembly could allow you the strong naming and such.

-John
> http://www.iunknown.com
>
>
> On 3/30/06, listrecv / gmail.com <listrecv / gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I still don't understand.  Who are you trying to protect - a user from
> > running a malicous (or tampered with) ruby script?  If so, as I said,
> > this is no different than protecting a user from running a trojan
> > compiled file - people either trust the author (and hopefully use code
> > signing), or run the code in a sandbox.
> >
> > In terms of ensuring that only admin's can install the ruby
> > executable/interpreter - this is currently impossible, and likely will
> > remain so.  Even if you mark your exe/interpreter to require admin
> > privs to install, what's to stop anyone else from creating their own
> > exe/interpreter without that restriction?  It's essentially the old
> > copy protection / DRM issue, which all experts agree can always be
> > defeated (at least short of a hardware implementation).
> >
> >
> >
>
>


--
===Tanner Burson===
tanner.burson / gmail.com
http://tannerburson.com   <---Might even work one day...

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