On Alan Knowles' blog today, he take a look at code encryption and some of the efforts that he's seen to encrypt PHP.

Someone just emailed me to comment on something called phpcodelock, (google for it, I'm not going to advertise stupid products)..

It's always funny to see people try and encypt PHP source (or javascript/html for that matter.) As the reality is, encyption is only any good when the end user doesnt get hold of all the keys to open the door.

So to try and stop stupid people spending (or losing their) money on stupid products, here's a hackers guide to reading encypted PHP code.

He give the "steps" to unencrypt encrypted PHP code - a joke really, as it seems to be a sprintf right before the code is executed (output buffering anyone?). He mentions a case where he worked on the bcompiler project, a product that has some functionality as a code encrypter.

The only justification I can imagine (having seen the crap hidden behind this stuff) is to hide away some horrifically bad code, that the Author was so embarressed to show to the world..