there was a story about one european company and an Excel spreadsheet with VBA code that would stop working after 3 months and a developer who would "unlock" it for another 3 mo if he has a maintenance contract
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/12/contractor-admit...
> On Monday, David A. Tinley, a 62-year-old from Harrison City, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to six months in prison and a fine of $7,500 in the scheme.
> While this worked for about two years until May 13, 2016, Tinley's scheme was discovered when he was out of town and he had to give his password to Siemens' employees because of a time-sensitive deadline that required the spreadsheets to work.
Oops.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/siemens-contr...
but the GM had already given us a stern warning to show him respect. also he got around without the use of his legs. If I'd reacted as I wanted to it would not have gone down well...
Then they hired an intern with compiler experience and suddenly his help wasn't needed anymore
Replace all variable/function names with generics. Your only job is to give names to every variable (trying to figure out what each does). After you're done you can compare to de-obfuscated names to see if they do what you expected (if they're named sensibly).