Obfuscating C-based binaries to avoid decompilation

Question

Is there some way to obfuscate C-based executables or libraries to prevent decompilation?

Answer 1

Why obfuscate the code if there's a commercial gain from it? To be honest, suppose the commercial code is optimized enough and obfuscated, and works, then the mother of a all embarrassing thing happened - a glitch....you are stuck imho, as the production binary code is obfuscated, making it harder to debug where the glitch is happening and difficult to replicate, it will be stuck on the BUGS list forever...

For instance, trying to find the stack trace, you'll end up with losing more hairs then ever trying to figure out the dis-assembled code to work out WTF is happening in there, endless reams of spaghetti loops. In short, don't!

You'll end up with losing money in trying to debug the glitch...either you have to be a brilliant assembler expert to read up the memory dumps and work it out from obfuscated code... Don't throw it away, just get your beautiful product working and sell it...Sure, there's plenty of people that have time on their hands to break it by reverse-engineering the code...

The secret to beating that is following the principle - release frequently, release often, make improvements as you release often, in that way the latest and greatest features would be more up-to-date then the time it takes for a cracker to disassemble it and work out! Look at the linux source code, the patches come in, then it gets released...if you keep that principle in mind, by releasing new version with more features at a far more faster pace then you're winning!