» We have a website maintained by an old employee and it appears it's encoded by Zend Guard including all backups. I know a little about Zend Optimizer, but never considered it for source protection as I know in the end the bytecode will need to be decoded for the interpreter, and was sure people easily decode optimized files using some software. Now I need to decode some files and I can't find anything but some 'paid services'.

Decompiling a compiled PHP file is aparrantly possible, but you don't get the formatting or comments since they're removed. It is the encoding bit which is important as that adds extra security to help reduce the usefulness of the output from a decompilation task. For example the new Zend Encoder has.

We have the ownership of the code and are locked out now for any changes and debugging. How can I decode our files back?

Zend Guard maximizes software profitability by: • Limiting unauthorized duplication or use of your applications. Dj Mitsu The Beats Extra Feeding Raritan. • Ensuring that only licensed customers use your products and that they remain within the terms of your license. • Offering flexible licensing terms that make your software products more attractive, increase sales, and improve customer satisfaction. • Increasing conversion rate from evaluation to licensed product.

• Preventing other people from changing your code (all files are rendered as un-editable and external changes will corrupt the code) protecting the files against external tampering. Prevent reverse engineering through PHP encoding and obfuscation You worked hard to develop your code. Now you need to protect it. Zend Guard's powerful encoding and obfuscation technologies prevent reverse engineering, copyright infringement and unauthorized modification of your code.

Encoding is a process where the PHP source code is converted to an intermediate machine readable format, just like PHP encryption. This format is hard for humans to read and convert back to source code. As a result it protects your code from casual browsing. This means that if people obtain access to your site's code they will not be able to use that for unintended purposes.

Obfuscation is a process where the code is intentionally made very hard to read as source code or as reverse engineered code. This obfuscation is designed to manage risks that stem from unauthorized access to source code. These risks include loss of intellectual property, ease of probing for application vulnerabilities and loss of revenue that can result when applications are reverse engineered, modified to circumvent licensing and then recompiled. Although reverse engineering always existed in computer software, it is especially important for in computing environments such as PHP which take advantage of dynamic processing of language elements rather than code which has been compiled into machine language before being deployed.

Compiles and converts the plain-text PHP scripts into a platform-independent binary format known as a 'Zend Intermediate Code' file. These encoded binary files can then be distributed instead of the plain text PHP protecting your hard programming efforts. Benefits of using this PHP encrypt process: • Enables PHP source code protection (against copyright infringement and reverse-engineering) of commercial PHP applications through advanced encoding and obfuscation technologies.

• Provides IT Managers with a solution that prohibits modification of their internal PHP application source code so they can effectively support them. • Streamlined integration with Zend Studio – just one click and your PHP application is encoded. • Auto-detects and suggests PHP code elements (such as functions and methods) to exclude them from being obfuscated significantly reducing development time. The license file, deployed along with the encoded PHP, is validated at runtime.

Licenses can be easily modified or renewed, without the need to deploy new software. Vendors can pick-and-choose from a variety of flexible licensing models: • Concurrent Users - Usage is limited by the number of real-time users. • Time Limited: - A time limited license used for evaluation purposes or time dependent terms, with pre-set expiration dates.

• Segment of Network: - Usage is limited by IP address range restricting licenses according to network topology. • Specific Server: - License limited to specific hardware, based on Host ID. • Advanced Options: - Specify advanced licensing options by adding custom code. Zend Optimizer Zend Optimizer is now obsolete because it's included in PHP 5.3 and later. It is made available free of charge to users of earlier versions of PHP. Zend Optimizer is loaded as a PHP engine extension. This extension, automatically optimizes PHP scripts, and transparently detects and loads encoded files.