Talk:Unprotecting a protected MIX
Thanks for fixing up the formatting and such, Renegade. Sorry I left it in such a mess, I was in a bit of a hurry at the time. Aristurtle 21:58, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Also, some notes that aren't important enough to go on the main page:
The next step towards making a better MIX protector is obvious: use RA2's Blowfish encryption on the header. The number of files then wouldn't be available without decrypting the header, which is mathematically too difficult to bother with by hand (as shown in the tutorial). Since the blowfish key is stored in the very MIX you're distributing, though, one could defeat such a method by using some software to decrypt the header using that key (or do it by hand if you're really patient, I guess), and then fixing the header from there (optionally removing the blowfish encryption at the same time.) In the end, any method of MIX protection is fundamentally flawed: in order for your user to use your mod, the MIX files need to be usable in the game, and if the game can read them, there's no real way to make them unreadable by some other program.
Patching XCC Mixer to read MIX files with malformed headers should be trivial though I haven't dived into the code yet.
(Ethical implications of MIX protecting and unprotecting hopefully go elsewhere. The discussion has already been had and I don't think anyone is changing anyone else's mind).Aristurtle 22:10, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
- Just so you know.. I have written a tool that can read/write protected and blowfish'd mixes properly. No need to do that same work again. //DCoder 04:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
