Flash 10.1 update for hardware acceleration on MAC OS

Google đang phát triển dịch vụ cạnh tranh với Facebook

Facebook cùng với những Twitter, Myspace... đang là những mạng xã hội phổ biến và có số lượng người dùng đông đảo nhất hiện nay, tất nhiên Google không muốn bỏ qua thị trường mới mẻ nhưng cũng rất hứa hẹn này, bằng chứng cho thấy gã khổng lồ ngành tìm kiếm đang nung nấu một ý định cho ra mắt dịch vụ mạng xã hội của riêng mình nhằm cạnh tranh trực tiếp với Facebook. Thông tin này được chính cựu giám đốc cấp cao phụ trách công nghệ của Facebook, ngài Adam D’Angelo tiết lộ, ông cho biết dịch vụ của Google sẽ có tên Google Me và còn "cảnh báo" Facebook rằng Google đầu tư cho dự án này rất nhiều cũng như chuẩn bị rất kỹ lưỡng. Thông tin về Google Me đã từng xuất hiện nhưng chỉ là những tin đồn, giờ đây D’Angelo đã chính thức xác nhận dự án có thật này của Google. Google hiện cũng đang có một dịch vụ được coi là Facebook thu nhỏ mang tên Google Buzz nhưng nó quá đơn giản, họ cần một dịch vụ mạng xã hội đầy đủ chức năng, mạnh mẽ và có thể cạnh tranh với Facebook. Google có lợi thế là một đại gia, với những dịch vụ nền web có sẵn, liệu Google Me có đối trọng được với Facebook?

Nguồn: http://www.tinhte.vn/threads/432578-Google-dang-phat-trien-dich-vu-canh-tranh-voi-Facebook

Away3D and Papervision3D Performance Test

Although Away3D has been released two version, including Away3DLite for FP10 and Haxe support, PV3D still wins the performance. Hope PV3D version for Haxe will be released soon.

http://inside.silverbase.net/away3d-papervision3d-performance/

Some information for Haxe-PV3D in a chinese website http://hi.baidu.com/actionscript3/blog/category/Haxe

Protect your SWFs from decompilers

So far, Protecting SWFs from decompilers is not important for me. The main reason why is that all projects I has done till now are all outsourcing projects and I have never received such requests from the client.

During recent months, I have developed some games for the company then I found that some old games has been stolen by other competitors using decompiler tool. In such case, Decompilers are real worry for people who create flash content. You can put a lot effort into design and coding the best game there, then someone can steal it (images, sounds, source code or whole), replace logo, change a little bit design, etc... and put it into their website. How? Using a Flash decompiler tool. Unless you project your SWFs, it can be decompiled and decompiler can output whole readable source code and assets.

1. Getting started

To begin, I give you an example to illustrate throughout my article.

Use Sothink SWF Decompiler tool to decompile, we will see all assets, including images, sounds beyond readable source code appear.

2. Anti-Decompile

Use a third-party software to protect and encrypt your SWFs. For example, SecureSWF, SWFProtection

As we see, package và class name are all renamed to make difficult for developers to read and Compiler can not build in normal way ( '_-' signs are invalided for package, class or variable declares).

The techniques used in these tools are Obfuscation and Encryption. Almost of tools are commercial.

3. An approach to Anti-decompile

A technique, which is very easy to implement, is that use [Embed] meta tag. It is called 'ByteArray based data embedding technology in Actionscript 3'. To do that, we encapsulates the whole SWF file into a ByteArray based data structure, then it loaded and decompressed further.

package  {
import flash.display.DisplayObject;
import flash.display.Loader;
import flash.display.Sprite;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
import flash.system.ApplicationDomain;
import flash.system.LoaderContext;
import flash.utils.ByteArray;
import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;
/**
* The is wrapper class to embed the main file as binary format.
* @author Hai Nguyen
*/
[SWF(width="640", height="480", frameRate="60", backgroundColor="0x000000")]
public class GameEncrypt extends Sprite {
[Embed(source='/../bin/RollyBallGame.swf', mimeType='application/octet-stream')]
public var GameBinaryClass: Class;

private var loader: Loader;

public function GameEncrypt() {
init();
}

private function init():void {
var data: ByteArray = new GameBinaryClass() as ByteArray;

loader = new Loader();
loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, loaderCompleteHandler);
loader.loadBytes(data, new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain));
}

private function loaderCompleteHandler(event: Event): void {
var gameClass: Class = getDefinitionByName("RollyBallGame") as Class;
var game: DisplayObject = new gameClass();

addChild(game);
}
}
}

• Line 17: [Embed(source='/../bin/RollyBallGame.swf', mimeType='application/octet-stream')]. The RollyBallGame.swf file is compiled normally using Flex SDK. We use [Embed] meta tag to embed the whole SWF as binary format.

• Line 27: var data: ByteArray = new GameBinaryClass() as ByteArray; Declare data variable to hold ByteArray based SWF.
• Line 31: loader.loadBytes(data, new LoaderContext(false, ApplicationDomain.currentDomain)); Use loadBytes function of Loader to embedded SWF into main appliction domain.
• Line 35-36: Retrieve the main class inside embedded SWF, then create an instance and add it into stage

That's it.

4. Analyze the result



As you can see, all assets and source code are hidden except several necessary classes for decompress embedded SWF.

5. Conclusion
This technique is rather simply to learn and implement. However, higher level people still can steal source code and asset from encrypted SWF. In my next post, I will show you the technique to do that as well as additional protection to help your SWF more secure.
Of course, This is not unique way to protect your SWF, you can use some software for your purpose. Good luck :)

You can download the source code here.