Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

It's an absolutely fascinating proposition. The implication of the technology is that such a program would consume many orders of magnitude more CPU and memory to achieve the same result as a non-obfuscated program, so you'd only use it for core cryptographic processes.


Generally you want cryptographic primitives to run extremely fast though. This just comes across as something useful for the "I need to protect my source from hackers!!!" types who don't care if it makes their program stupidly inefficient. The only difference being that here it can't be reverse engineered (usually a bad thing for people who like FLOSS). Yeah there are imaginary uses for running code in an insecure environment but that comes across as an afterthought and has the same problems.


You want bulk encryption to be fast, but can often handle slow key derivation.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: