Post #2691595

2025-12-06 09:04 UTC

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social @plumeros@swiss.social @globcoco@mamot.fr @Uddelhexe@mastodon.online You keep repeating "closed source software is not a black box" but in most cases that simply isn't true. Proprietary software companies go to great lengths to impede attempts to reverse engineer their binaries. One of the reasons proprietary apps are so bloated is because their code has been processed by an obfuscator, which replaces simple instructions with long sequences of mathematically equivalent code that takes thousands more instructions.

Replies (2)

@hyc@mastodon.social 2025-12-06 09:05

@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social @plumeros@swiss.social @globcoco@mamot.fr @Uddelhexe@mastodon.online speaking from experience, it can take hundreds to thousands of man hours and compute hours to deobfuscate these things.

Open ##2691596
@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social 2025-12-06 09:07

@hyc@mastodon.social @plumeros@swiss.social @globcoco@mamot.fr @Uddelhexe@mastodon.online The topic isn't obfuscated code but rather iOS compared to AOSP including the Linux kernel. iOS doesn't obfuscate the OS code and a large amount of public external research has been done on iOS. The overall system is closed source and the parts which are semi-open-source have the code released very late, but understanding the compiled code is hardly starting from scratch. You're responding as if this thread is about dealing with highly obfuscated software.

Open ##2691597