I’m currently working on a project where we need any data created by the game/app to be secured, as in nothing can be accessed without the running it. So far, I blindly built the app using the built-in save features (which saves to a .sav files) and using DLCs (.pak files). But recently as I was trying to read a .sav file, turns out opening in notepad reveals all the variables and values which isn’t good for what I want to use it for. This led me to question how secure .pak files are too.
Is there anyway I could easily secure these .sav files? Can we access a .pak file’s content without its corresponding UE4 game/app?
Regarding pak files, I know unpacking them is quite common and relatively easy regardless of whether they’re encrypted or not. I still don’t know if there is a way to properly secure them.
After a discussion with one of the devs, it turns out at some point in the past (UDK2 or 3) they had an encryption system for sav files alongside other things. They had to remove it because of a few bad experiences in addition of the xBox platform not accepting game encrypted game files (they require everything to be encrypted by the OS). So when it comes to .sav files, we have to secure it ourselves.
Concerning .pak files, ever since Fortnite came out a lot of devs are getting better and better at unpacking those packages. From what I remember, textures, static meshes and animations can be easily retrieved. As of September 2018, it seems the encryption tick box doesn’t actually encrypt the paks meaning they can be accessed ( see [UE4] Lineage 2 Revolution ).