Renaming Cygwin DLLs

[Peter Rehley]

On Jan 6, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Mike Disbrow wrote:

>> On Wed, Jan 05, 2005 at 03:58:39PM -0600, Mike Disbrow wrote:
>> >I'd like to build the supporting Cygwin DLLs to be renamed to 
>> something
>> >other than cyg*.dll (e.g.  cygwin1.dll to foo.dll), what is the best
>> >way to build the DLLs with different names?
>>
>> May I ask why you want to do this?  I can't think of any valid reason 
>> to
>> rename the DLL which would not involve trying to mask the existence of
>> Cygwin.  And, I can't think of any reason for doing that which does 
>> not
>> involve either bypassing Cygwin's GPL or trying to take credit for a 
>> DLL
>> which you didn't develop.
>>
> The motive isn't that sinister.  We'll be deploying Cygwin's X Server 
> to users and don't want the users to know whose X Server we're using.  
> In fact, we're doing all we can to hide the fact that the application 
> they're using is running through X.  By changing the dll names we hope 
> to make it a little harder for someone to determine we're using 
> Cygwin's X Server so they don't get the source, and modify it in some 
> malicious way.
>
> - Mike

Ummm, an intelligent user would still figure this out.    It seems that 
you are trying to camouflage that cygwin is being used.  Security 
through obscurity will not stop a user.   There is also more that you 
need to change then just the dll name.  There are the registry keys, 
uname output, plus probably a dozen other things that I'm not aware of.

What might be better is to setup the cygwin environment as admin on an 
NTFS partition and then make sure the user doesn't have admin 
privileges.  That way a user wouldn't be able to change the default 
configuration.  They still might be able to figure out how to recompile 
items and make them work and screw up their own environment, but 
nothing that an admin couldn't quickly fix.

Enjoy,
Peter
-------------------------------
A Møøse once bit my sister


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