On Mar 6, 2013, at 12:17 PM, SUBSCRIBE MACSCRPT Inyo55 wrote:

> I have a script that has to remotely do admin tasks on a Mac workstation.  To that end, the shell script command string in the script has the secret password for the admin account in plain text.  Is there anyway to hide this (other than locking the script)?

Hi Bob,

Check out the topic "Obfuscation of Hard-Coded Data in an AppleScript" at codemunki.com. As with the suggestions by Ed and Deivy, this method is just a smokescreen and not really "secure". However, it is a bit more secure if you store only the ciphertext in the target script, and not the handler that deciphers it.

You could use 'load script' to access the handler or put it into a custom module for a library loading utility like AppleMods (http://applemods.sourceforge.net) or XModules (http://www.script-factory.net/XModules/en/index.html). This still isn't very secure. Any good scripter would be able to reverse engineer and acquire the password, but it would keep everyone else in the dark.

Stan C.