this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Programming
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And it will get worse with WASM. At least now we can see the entirity of the code and even patch it if required, and WASM might make that way harder.
I'd argue that having a sandbox that can run binaries with a limited and customizable feature set is actually a good thing for the web. I think there are more technically competent solutions, but the fact that WASM is available on virtually every machine and os, makes it pretty powerful.
If implemented right WASM might speed up our web apps, keep the browser sandbox that is actually quite nice, and run on pretty much any machine. If they open sourced the code, that'd be even better.
Between minified js and WASM, I think I'd take WASM (I can't understand minified js anyway). Between a pure html site and WASM, I think I'd take the pure html site (but I don't think we will be living in that world anytime soon).
The difference between minified JS and WASM is that you can un-minify one with relatively good results, whereas decompiling WASM is similar to decompiling normal binaries - pretty hard to read. This means that even experienced users can't really understand or change WASM binaries.
For WASM you can probably use tools like ghidra to decompile and read.
Minified js not a lot better then raw ASM, single letter names and crazy optimisation patterns will make your life hell. Patching both I think is out of the question, maybe just inject some new js that interact with the DOM.
Did a bit of reverse engineering on binaries in my life, and also spent too much time reading the youtube minified js. Both are hard as hell.
Sure, as I said it's similar to decompiling normal binaries, which is hard to read (even when you're used to it).
I'm not talking about reading minified JS. I'm saying: un-minifying JS gets you a way more readable result than decompiling native binaries does. I've done both more than often enough to know this difference well.
I've written mods and patches for dozens of minified sites, and it's never been too hard. I've written mods and patches for native applications, and it's waaaay harder - even just finding free space in the binary where you can inject your code and jump to/from is annoying, let alone actually writing your changes in ASM. All of this is immediately solved even with minified JS.