PHP Source Encryption - Effectiveness and Disadvantages

Question

I have some PHP source code that I\'m hosting with hosting company XYZ. I\'m using a PHP encryption software like Zend Guard or ionCube to protect the source from being view

Answer 1

Neither Zend Guard nor ionCube uses encryption, in it's mathematical sense, to protect your code. What they do, except the obfuscation already described by other answers, is encoding.

This is a process that's normally done automatically by the PHP interpreter each time your script is accessed - your PHP script is compiled into a bytecode format, that's then executed. What encoders like Zend Guard and ionCube essentially does is an equivalent process, only that it's done once, and then only the "compiled" bytecode is made available/uploaded to the server.

This means that actually recreating the very same code that you once wrote is entirely impossible. What is not impossible, and this goes for obfuscation as well, is reverse-engineering the compiled or obfuscated code to figure out what it's doing.

To summarize, I'd say that these products are very good at protecting your code - as opposed to protecting your logic.