Why do people keep stealing my work :(

[Don Y]

Chuck Guzis wrote:
>>> Lots of clever ideas to prevent/discourage that sort of thing  ;-)
> 
> I knew a fellow who liked to "brand" his code by executing his name.
> Actually, it's pretty easy on x86 platforms; most uppercase alphas are
> simple 1-byte register ops.  For example, "DERMOUSE"  would translate to:
> 
> INC SP
> INC BP
> PUSH DX
> DEC BP
> DEC DI
> PUSH BP
> PUSH BX
> INC BP
> 
> The simple way to code this would be to follow this with a bit of "fixup"
> code:
> 
> DEC BP
> ADD SP,5
> INC DI

And just *hope* that this fixup code doesn't decode to
"SELLS USED CARS" or some other perjorative...  :>

> But code of a bit more devious bent would actually set registers up with
> known values before the name and then check their values to make sure that
> the "name" code has been executed.
> 
> I once remember hacking some game that did just this.  Drove me nuts when
> the execution path veered off into what I thought was data.

If you use a batch disassembler, you'll also get screwed by
cases of inlined data.  E.g., I often do things like:

	CALL SOMETHING
	DB <parameters_for_something>

LABEL:	<do_something_else>

If the <parameters_for_something> don't map into an integral
number of instructions, then the disassembler's PC won't
line up with LABEL: and some number of instructions in that
vicinity will get improperly decoded (until the disassembler
syncs up "by chance" with the instruction stream)