Gft Group Inc. Offers Faster Code Obfuscation and Encryption for Dragon NaturallySpeaking

Submitted by Video_wizard on Mon, 09/04/2006 - 15:06.

GFT Group Inc. offers a technology for code obfuscation and encryption for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Advanced Scripting commands, the Petrana Code Mangler. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a state-of-the-art commercial speech-recognition program from Nuance (formerly ScanSoft). Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional, Medical, and Legal support Advanced Scripting commands are written in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The Petrana Code Mangler enables third-party developers of add-on software for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to offer trial versions of their software for evaluation by potential customers, to offer sale versions of their software that require an activation key, and to reduce the risks of software piracy and reverse engineering of Dragon NaturallySpeaking add-on software.

Mountain View, CA (PRWEB) September 1, 2006 -- GFT Group Inc. offers a technology for code obfuscation and encryption for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Advanced Scripting commands, the Petrana Code Mangler. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a state-of-the-art commercial speech-recognition program from Nuance (formerly ScanSoft). Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional, Medical, and Legal support Advanced Scripting commands are written in Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). The Petrana Code Mangler enables third-party developers of add-on software for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to offer trial versions of their software for evaluation by potential customers, to offer sale versions of their software that require an activation key, and to reduce the risks of software piracy and reverse engineering of Dragon NaturallySpeaking add-on software.

A fundamental problem for third-party developers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking software is that Dragon NaturallySpeaking Advanced Scripting commands are written in human readable Visual Basic for Applications and may be viewed and copied easily by customers, resellers, and others. By removing human readable information where possible and encrypting human readable information otherwise, the Petrana Code Mangler reduces the risks of software piracy and reverse engineering and enables third-party developers to more easily protect and market their valuable software add-ons for Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

The Petrana Code Mangler version 1.0 and version 2.0 have been used successfully on Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional 7, 8, and 9 command sets by Kaberline Healthcare Informatics.

GFT Group Inc. has used the Petrana Code Mangler successfully for its own products: the Petrana voice commands for DVD and the Petrana voice commands for Outlook Express. Trial versions of the Petrana Voice Commands for DVD and the Petrana Voice Commands for Outlook Express are available on the Petrana web site http://www.Petrana.net. These trial versions demonstrate the code obfuscation and encryption and can be used a maximum of 100 times.

The Petrana Code Mangler removes comment lines, replaces human readable variable and function names with nonsense strings, encrypts quoted strings, and add spurious nonfunctional code to Advanced Scripting commands to make reverse engineering and piracy more difficult. The Petrana Code Mangler can also add time bombs to create trial versions of the software. The Petrana Code Mangler can also add activation code that request a customer specific activation key before the command will work. The Petrana Code Mangler is implemented as a set a voice commands for Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional, Medical, or Legal. The Petrana Code Mangler will not work with lesser versions of Dragon NaturallySpeaking such as the Preferred or Standard versions which do not support Advanced Scripting commands.

The Petrana Code Mangler version 2 .0 uses a high-speed compiled code mangling engine implemented as a standard ActiveX object. The Petrana Code Mangler is available in three versions: Professional, Preferred, and Standard. The Professional version contains the high-speed version of the engine and mangles commands at a rate of several per second. The Preferred version contains a slower engine and mangles commands at a rate of about one command every 30 seconds. The Standard version contains the slowest engine and mangles commands at a rate of about one command every minute. The Standard or Preferred versions of the code mangler are appropriate for small developers whose sales volume or usage requirements are too small to justify the cost and performance of the Professional version.

The Petrana Code Mangler can be licensed from GFT Group Inc.. Some customization for specific projects may be required.

GFT Group Inc. is a private research and development and consulting company with offices in Mountain View, California and Maryland. GFT Group Inc. markets Petrana. Petrana is an artificial personal assistant who talks to the computer user in spoken English and operates computer applications for the user easily, comfortably, and enjoyably, giving the user free use of his or her hands and freedom of movement.

Contact:
John F. McGowan, Ph.D.
President, Research and Development Division
GFT Group Inc.
Web Site: www.Petrana.net

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Press Contact: John Mcgowan
Company Name: GFT GROUP INC.
Email: jmcg...@GFTGroup.com
Website: http://www.Petrana.net

More Information: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/9/prweb426184.h...

Wonder how much overhead

Submitted by BruceCyr on Wed, 09/06/2006 - 18:26.

Wonder how much overhead encryption imposes on the user? For example, saying the same commands in a plain and an encrypted version, what are the lag times before a reaction is noted? If there is a noticeable lag differential, does it improve or degrade as a session gets longer? Etc.

Bruce

There is negligible overhead

Submitted by Video_wizard on Wed, 09/06/2006 - 18:40.

There is negligible overhead for simple commands that emulate a few keystrokes,
menu selections, button presses, or typing short blocks of text. Most of our commands and our customers commands fall into this category. These commands typically execute in less than the human reaction time of about 1 second, hence the
overhead is not noticable. The overhead is a tiny fraction of a second in these cases. ( on the 2.6 GHz Sony VAIO laptop and 3 GHz HP desktop computers that we use)

There is some slowing of computationally intensive commands that take many seconds or minutes to execute. The code mangler was initially implemented (version 1.0) as a Dragon command set and then mangled itself for use by customers. There was some noticable slowing in this case. The code mangler is now implemented as a much faster
ActiveX object which circumvents this issue.

There is no cumulative slowing. Each obfuscated command executes separately and there
appears to be no lasting effects on Dragon once the command has completed exectution. Theoretically there should not be and, so far, experience agrees with theory.

John McGowan

Video_wizard wrote: There

Submitted by admin on Wed, 09/06/2006 - 21:12.

Video_wizard wrote:

Hm. On my 966Mhz Pentium III that would equal about 3 days. Laughing out loud

The code mangler has no

Submitted by Video_wizard on Wed, 09/06/2006 - 21:41.

The code mangler has no effect on the time it takes Dragon to recognize the spoken command. It only affects the time to execute the command once recognized.

The overhead is caused primarily by the encryption of embedded strings in the command script. This typically causes a slight increase in the execution time of the
script.

John