RE: Obfuscation

["Eyers, Daniel" <daniel.eyers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<tongue firmly planted in cheek>
I think the best obfuscation practice is to write *bad code*.  I've seen a good 
deal of RPG that looks like someone
obfuscated it.... More than 5 levels of "ifs" for example... great way to hide 
code functionality

Unneccessary try blocks with multiple catch that do nothing, a few hundred 
single or two line methods, machine dependant
code (like C++ APIs) and lack of comments and block indenting go a long way to 
keeping the functionality from prying
eyes.  Hey, it was hard to write..... it should be hard to read.

</tongue>

*grins*

dan


-----Original Message-----
From: David Morris [mailto:David.Morris@plumcreek.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 12:22 PM
To: java400-l@midrange.com
Subject: RE: Obfuscation


Joe,

I wonder how effective this is and also whether IBM employs
obfuscation in the toolkit classes that have no source. I
guess that they might include some inline encrypted byte
code to discourage casual observation, but even then it
would seem possible to write code that would dump
the bytecode when the class is loaded.

David Morris

>>> joepluta@PlutaBrothers.com 04/10/02 10:51AM >>>
> From: Bruce Jin
>
> What is 'obfuscate' and how do you do that?

Obfuscate means basically to scramble the contents of the JAR file.  In
most
cases, it involves renaming your packages, classes, methods and fields
to
something that doesn't give any clue as to what it does.  This also
tends to
reduce the size of your JAR file.

You do this by getting an obfuscator.  There are several out there.

Joe
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