Security - Obfuscating GUI and Sub-VI References in a LabVIEW Executable

[ChromaBurst]

Somebody said there were no dumb questions, so here's mine for the day...

Is there any way to hide GUI and Sub-VI References in a LabVIEW executable (.EXE)?

What am I talking about? Grab Process Explorer (part of System Internals) from Microsoft and look at the printable strings in memory and in the image of any LabVIEW executable. You'll find refs to all the sub-VIs sometimes at the end of the image. As expected, there's a textual dump of GUI screens through the string tables.

Anyone know how to mask these strings or is this a limitation of the G-complier or Run-Time Engine? Not a simple answer me thinks...

-Chroma

[tst]

There is nothing built-in, and I don't know of any readily available tool to do this, but you might wish to read this article. You should note that it's talking about VI names, not control names, but you can also programmatically change the control names when you're building, as long as you recompile the hierarchy. Just note that this creates a problem if you do any dynamic calls.

[TCPlomp]

The LabVIEW 8.5 builder allows you to change the names of individual VI prior to build.
But the OpenG builder has better support for such an action, they have the option to apply a random password to any VI.

Ton