WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security"

rkg has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I need to deploy Win32 Perl apps to an internal secure LAN.

The apps employ in-house modules, ppm-installed modules, and CPAN-installed modules. It is hard keeping all the machines up-to-date. I need some sort of wrapper if released locally, or a good way to run the code from the server.

I'd also prefer minor obfu of the source -- not for security (yep yep I know 'security thru obfuscation' is bogus) but rather to keep non-developer users from poking around in the code. (Rudimentary door locks sometimes make sense as they keep honest folks honest -- determined bad folks can break in to all but the most secure buildings regardless. As long as the homeowner knows the strengths and weaknesses of their locks...)

PAR sounded great -- offering both the much-needed wrapper aspect and the desired-but-not-critical mild obfu aspect -- but I've had trouble getting PAR working reliably under WinXP.

Making PAR work involved setting the "run mode" to win95 -- but this could not be done unless the apps were on the local drive; if on the server, XP wouldn't allow me to set the runmode. And if done on each client, I couldn't figure out how to set the mode via script, and the point-and-click machine-by-machine script-by-script was unacceptable.

Anyone have other suggestions?

Thanks

rkg

Comment on WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security"

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Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by Zaxo (Archbishop) on Nov 23, 2003 at 08:02 UTC
... an internal secure LAN. There is no such thing. Most security breaches are the work of insiders. Worry less about them knowing your code - let them know through it that they need to work too hard to break it. After Compline, Zaxo	[reply]
Re: Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by rkg (Hermit) on Nov 23, 2003 at 13:36 UTC
...let them know through it that they need to work too hard to break it..." -- what do you mean?	[reply]
Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by bart (Canon) on Nov 23, 2003 at 21:19 UTC
There's still PerlApp and perl2exe.	[reply]
Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by Roger (Parson) on Nov 23, 2003 at 04:15 UTC
Can you give a bit more detail on what your application does? Without knowing what your application does, its hard to judge what's an appropriate solution. Is there a particular reason why you want to deploy your Perl application to install and run on every machine, instead of developing a centuralized, web based application, so your users only need a web browser to run?	[reply]
Re: Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by rkg (Hermit) on Nov 23, 2003 at 13:40 UTC
That's an interesting idea, but not trivial. The apps read and write XML files, the apps use OLE into MS Office apps, and some of the apps are take several minutes to run (browser would time out) etc. To webify them all, the team would have to build something like an old batch time sharing wrapper -- "upload data", "submit processing job", "retrieve data results and run log", etc.	[reply]
Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by rkg (Hermit) on Nov 23, 2003 at 17:03 UTC
Here's how I've been trying to structure my thinking: The apps could live on the server (S), or the client (C). The libs could live on the server, or the client. The perl executable employed could live on the server, or the client. The perl process could run on the client, or on the server. The app could be a stand-alone program (P), or a be served as a cgi script (W). My preference would be S1. I believe C4 and P5 are requirements, given the way the apps use local OLE and run some long processes. My problem has been keeping all the machines up-to-date (eg C2, with ppm & cpan). I've never before considered executing perl locally from networked binaries (C4, S2, S3). My original idea was to bundle with PAR, so C1 C2 (sort of), C3 C4 and P5 (clearly). And I think the fact this is all under Win and WinXP at that is relevant to this all... :( Ideas, comments, suggestions most welcome... Many thanks! rkg	[reply]
Re: WinXP: App wrapping, PAR, Mild "Security" by Anonymous Monk on Nov 23, 2003 at 05:22 UTC
Making PAR work involved setting the "run mode" to win95 Is that a `pp' option (I didn't see one)?	[reply]