Remove diagram: How secure is it?

[Z]

I would like to deliver a group of vis to a customer and would like to hide the inter workings of the vis. Simplest way seems to be to remove the diagrams. Could someone confirm that this is very secure and there is no way to recover the diagrams? Any other suggestion about delivering a library to customer without showing the internal structure?Thanks.

[Steve W.]

You should be safe by removing the diagrams from your vi's. I have read other posts where users only had copies of vi's without diagrams and were looking for ways to recover them to make modifications. Any answers that I've seen have said that they were out of luck (you can't recover what isn't there). Another thing you could do to secure your vi's is to password protect them whick also seems secure and still gives you the ability to modify.

[Dennis_Knutson]

It's absolutely secure to remove the diagrams. Not even NI can recover them. But, IMHO, removing diagrams is not the best solution. Once you remove a diagram ,then the customer is stuck with with using that VI with only the version of LabVIEW that created it. Upgrading requires that the diagram be present. I would recomend password protection instead. You might prefer to sell the customer a new VI when they upgrade their version of LabVIEW but as a customer, I get awfully p*ssed when that happens. NI distributes password protected VIs when they want to protect the code and I would think that if they're comfortable with that security, so should you be.

[Z]

This is good to know. Thanks to all who responded.

[Al_S]

I've always suspected that NI has some tool which allows them to enter a password you can't just type in from the keyboard.

[alipio]

I do not know how secure is the NI password. Actually, in this link http://www.aivaliotis.com/archives/lv/vi_password_cracking.shtml you can find a Labview program to crack vi passwords. It is brute force, but If one has plenty of time.... an computers....

You can distribute yor software diagrams removed, making sure you keep a copy to work with.

[zou]

Remove diagram is the best and simplest way to protect G "code". Password protected VIs are not safe. NI can unlock any password protected VI. And NI can do that for your clients.

The reason for NI feels comfortable with password protection to their own VIs is probably because those VIs are protected by property nodes. Another words, if you crack the password, you'll find a new property node on the diagram, nothing else.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Yeah, but would NI do that? I still won't buy VIs from anyone that removes the diagrams. Too many Alliance companies disappear and when they do and I upgrade my version of LabVIEW, I'm screwed. When I was in the business of selling VIs, I never worried about someone breaking the password. Now that the company I worked for is no longer in the business of LabVIEW programming, I'm glad that NI can possibly unlock a password protected VI of mine that I'm no longer around to support.

[zou]

I would bug VI without diagram if there is no better options at the time. That buy me time to develop my own resolution.

[Greg_McKaskle2]

> Remove diagram is the best and simplest way to protect G "code".
> Password protected VIs are not safe. NI can unlock any password
> protected VI. And NI can do that for your clients.
>
> The reason for NI feels comfortable with password protection to their
> own VIs is probably because those VIs are protected by property nodes.
> Another words, if you crack the password, you'll find a new property
> node on the diagram, nothing else.

You are correct that for absolute safety, you remove the diagrams. On
the downside, the VI cannot change platforms, versions of LV, or
anything else. I would hope that you have more trust in NI than your
statements imply. It isn't just anyone in NI that can remove the
password. Probably ten people or
less know how or could determine how.
It has also been very very rare for NI to unlock diagrams, and I feel
relatively comfortable that to this point no unlocked diagrams have gone
to the wrong person.

As for whether or not NI is comfortable with the password feature. The
password feature is quite secure, and since it is easy to use passwords
that are dozens of characters long with all sorts of special characters,
having a customer guess your password could take years of computer time.

If you have additional concerns or info I'm not aware of, feel free to
get in touch with me or another person at NI.

Greg McKaskle