Gareth Jones

I noticed a lot of traffic coming from the SWF Decrypt blog so I decided to take a look and see what was going on over there. It appears that Magus, the blog’s admin and author of the above named software has gotten pretty excited about DComSoft and Eltima being the same company. The reason for this is supposedly because both companies sell competing software – a SWF obfuscator and a SWF deobfuscator respectively, though an additional reason I think would be that for a few weeks now Magus has had a bee in his bonnet having broken DComSoft’s SWF protection and he no doubt sees this as a way of sticking the boot in.

To be honest though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if they were the same company:

• From correspondence I’ve had with reps from both companies, English is not their first language despite the USA being their registered addresses.
• When reviews of software from both companies go up on this blog, it’s Ukrainian traffic that comes for a look in both cases – not American.
• In all the correspondence I’ve had with these reps, their writing style is very similar.
• Products from both companies use the same activation tool and, as it would seem, the same EULA.
• Lastly, Eltima contacted me to offer me a review sample the *same day* that the DComSoft SWF Protector 2 review went up.

The thing is, who cares if they are the same company? Hundreds (if not thousands) of companies all around the world sell products that compete against each other – it’s known as a Multibrand Strategy or Multiple Branding and is defined below:

Marketing of two or more mutually competing products under different brand names by the same company. The motive may be that the company wishes to create internal competition to promote efficiency, or to differentiate its offering to different market segments, or to get maximum mileage out of established brands that it has acquired.

Source: http://www.brandchannel.com

One example would be BT, the UK’s telecommunications giant offering one phone number for recipients to tell who just called (1471), and another number to prevent this service from working if the caller doesn’t want the recipient to know who they are (141). Another would be that the same cosmetic companies offer both nail varnish and nail varnish remover. This really isn’t anything new.

In fact, you could even argue that a company that makes one product would be the best choice for a competing product – after all, the best lock-pickers are all lock-smiths.

Perhaps DComSoft’s/Eltima’s mistake is making themselves look suspicious by denying the link – or at least failing to acknowledge it – when accepting the link would have been no big deal to anyone with even a basic understanding of the markets.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that however unlikely it is that this is all coincidental, it’s not an absolute impossibility that these two companies are independent. While we can all speculate I think we should wait to hear from a rep from either company before making such conclusions.