[Python-Dev] Support for Encrypted Zip as python scripts

[Guido van Rossum]

Because it is easier to write in Python, and (as Greg explained) the
encryption is so lousy that you're unlikely to find heavy use of it.
Therefore nobody (so far) has cared to write an accelerator in C.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2009 at 9:23 PM, Shashank
Singh<shashank.sunny.singh at gmail.com> wrote:
> A litle off topic but the zipfile doc says: "Decryption is extremely slow as
> it
> is implemented in native python rather than C".
>
> Why is this limitation there? I mean, is there any specific reason for not
> implementing
> it in C?
>
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 8:45 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Guido van Rossum wrote:
>> > OMG, the use case is actually running a script without giving the user
>> > access to the script's source? Agreed that's a big -1.
>> >
>> > I thought it was just for running a zip containing code so secret you
>> > don't want to leave it around on your hard drive without encryption
>> > (say, the program you use to compute your employee's bonuses, or
>> > perhaps a patented algoritm for detecting spam). That use case would
>> > make a small amount of sense, though I personally don't care enough to
>> > write the code to support it.
>>
>> Actually, the issue posting doesn't say either way - it doesn't provide
>> any real use cases at all.
>>
>> For local protection of confidential information there are already much
>> better solutions out there (e.g. whole disk encryption, OS file
>> permissions, OS folder encryption), so a poor-man's DRM was the only
>> remaining remotely plausible use case I could see (and that's a bad idea
>> for all the reasons that DRM is almost always a bad idea).
>>
>> Now, that could just be a failure of imagination on my part, but genuine
>> use case suggestions for the feature have been non existent so far.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Nick.
>>
>> --
>> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
>
> --
> Regards
> Shashank Singh
> Senior Undergraduate, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
> shashank.sunny.singh at gmail.com
> http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~shashanksingh
>
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-- 
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)