I don’t know why this did not occur to me sooner: Distributed reverse engineering!
Category Archives: On2/Duck
Java Obfuscation Arms Race
So I have managed to automatically de-obfuscate an obfuscated Java project. Remember, there are 2 major challenges in reverse engineering: 1) Understanding the original code flow, and 2) understanding what the original identifier names could have been. My experiment was focused on problem #2. Problem #1 is generally a non-issue in decompiled Java code since Java classes retain so much information about the original code flow.
Are there better approaches for obfuscating Java code?
Thou Shalt Not Create Independent Tests
And software companies wonder why we users have trouble taking software end-user license agreements seriously. Roberto Togni actually read the license that accompanies On2’s VP7 Decoder. It contains this clause:
You may NOT:
4.publish or provide any results of tests, including without limitation benchmark tests, run on the Software to any third party without On2’s prior written consent
In fairness to On2, this is not an uncommon clause in EULAs. However, it presents some very curious scenarios. Am I allowed to publish something like this?
I looked at a VP7 sample and it did not look as good as WMV9, H.264, or even On2’s own VP6.
Maybe I should write and ask permission. A colleague brought up another point: Since this “no benchmark tests” is such a common EULA clause, it should stand to reason that Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder carries the same license. It is extremely unlikely that Microsoft would have granted written permission for this whitepaper exercise.
Update: Again, to be fair, the decoder license (On2’s Truecast Player) does not appear to mention anything about publishing benchmark tests. That is on the limited trial codec license.
VP7: On2 Just Won’t Quit
I was just thinking the other day about whether On2 would release VP7. This is the organization that brought us TrueMotion 1, TrueMotion 2, VP 3.0, VP 3.1, VP 4.0, VP 5.0, VP 6.0, and VP 6.1, not to mention VP 6.2. VP70 just seems like a natural progression.
What does ‘VP’ stand for anyway? I have never read any definitive answer. However, if On2’s technology focus is any clue, it stands for “Video Predictor”, owing to On2’s almost religious devotion to prediction-based compression algorithms.
Michael Roitzsch tipped me off that On2 has, indeed, unleashed their VP7 codec upon the world. True to form, their literature asserts that VP7 “rUleZ!!1!” and that “MicRo$$oFt is teh suck!1!!!” (slightly paraphrased, they state their points using graphs).