A comparative survey of Java obfuscators

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The proliferation of decompilers and the rapidly increasing use of Java have triggered a need for Java protectors, obfuscators. With so many obfuscators available on the Internet today, how can one know which is better? This project focuses on a comparative survey of Java obfuscators available on the Internet. Here, were surveyed 13 obfuscators from the Internet. It was used them to obfuscate both my benchmarks and “Logic program” from UCLA’s Philosophy department in America. The aughtor also tried decompiling these obfuscated classes by a Java decompiler, The  various obfuscators provide different security level options to protect Java programs. Many obfuscators work well, but some are not effective. 

It is a well known fact that Java Class files are easily reverse-engineered because Java bytecode contains a lot of the same information as its original source code does. In addition, Java programs, like Mobile codes, have a good reputation as to “ write once, run everywhere”. This flexibility has many potential advantages in a distributed environment. However, this distributed form increases the risk of malicious reverse engineering  attack. Therefore Java code is easy to decompile. 

Code obfuscation , as a newborn security technique, is currently one of the best protection tools for Java code from reverse engineering. It renders software unintelligible but still functionally equivalent to the original code. It makes programs more difficult to understand, so that it is more resistant to reverse engineering.

Obfuscators, which automatically transform a program by code obfuscation, are more and more available on the Internet by the increasing requirement. Various obfuscators provide different security levels to protect Java programs. The purpose of the project is firstly to understand the techniques of the obfuscation. Secondly, it is to assess the quality of an obfuscator, and to find out which part of the obfuscation techniques has been applied into the obfuscators available on the Internet. Finally, it is looking at possible techniques which will be used for the future obfuscators and what needs to be improved in my future Obfuscation Metrics.