views:

158

answers:

3

Does a Polymorphic engine have any other uses besides writing viruses?

+3  A: 

It can be used to protect your application against crackers/reverse engineers.

Oleg
It only makes it harder to reverse engineer.
Brad Gilbert
I agree. But "non-reversable" software protection does not exist in the world... So having some relatively good protection is better than having none ;)
Oleg
@Brad: guards only make it harder to rob banks. That is to say, they protect banks against robbers ;-p
Steve Jessop
A: 

It can be used to tailor a particular piece of javascript for a particular user-agent / version.

mjv
A: 

Polymorphic engines are written to challenge scanners looking for digital prints. The purpose is to change the print without modifying the behavior of the program, or data.

You could, for instance, apply a polymorphic engine on a copyrighted program, and then bypass a trial for pirating :)

Roubachof