Comments on: Protect Your Java Code from Reverse Engineering

By: Anurag Rana

Anurag Rana — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 16:33:34 +0000

sir when i tries to install java from package manager it says that…

E: Could not get lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock – open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the download directory

what is this error…and what should i do….

By: Recursos sobre Java « livrenet

Recursos sobre Java « livrenet — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:49:18 +0000

[...] Artigo sobre o ProGuard: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2008/06/protect-your-java-code-from-reverse-engineering/ [...]

By: Dmitry Leskov

Dmitry Leskov — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:35:14 +0000

Ramesh, you may wish to check out my article covering a couple other options for protecting Java apps:

http://www.excelsior-usa.com/articles/java-obfuscators.html

By: Narue

Narue — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 06:23:08 +0000

Thanks !
Great tool, the mapping is very usefull ^ ^

By: Ramesh Natarajan

Ramesh Natarajan — Fri, 08 May 2009 23:33:35 +0000

@Manas, Thanks for the nice comments about this article. I'm glad you found it very helpful. @VirtalPatel, You got a very good article on the Java-class-file-format. Yeah, I need to start writing more articles on Java. Most of my readers are Linux users. So, I'm not finding lot of motivation to write articles on Java. But, I'll definitely try to write few in the coming days. @saad , The end-user who is using your software will not have the map-file to reverse engineer. Ofcourse, as a developer who does the obfuscation should be able to do reverse engineer to get the code back using the map-file. @Stuart L. Riley, Excellent points. I totally agree with you. Combining ProGuard, Launch4J would be a great option. I have never tried the Enigma Protector. I'll check-out their trial version. Thanks for your great suggestions.

By: Stuart L. Riley

Stuart L. Riley — Wed, 06 May 2009 13:38:13 +0000

For deployed, stand-alone applications, try these in combination.

I’m not sure how well they work to protect your code, but I suspect they do a pretty good job, if used in this combination.

1. Obfuscate your jar file using ProGuard. It’s free at http://proguard.sourceforge.net/

2. Convert the obfuscated jar file to an exe using Launch4j. It’s free at http://launch4j.sourceforge.net/

3. Use Enigma Protector to wrap license control around the exe file. This program also gives you trialware capability. It’s not free ($99 – but worth it) at http://www.enigmaprotector.com/en/home.html

That’s what I do to prep my programs for deployment.

One final note. In case you are interested in an installer program, I recommend NSIS (free) at http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Download. There are many add-ons that make using this package easier.

S. L. Riley

PS – I also posted this at: http://www.javaworld.com/community/?q=node/2056#comment-3572

By: saad

saad — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:57:19 +0000

um, what if i just write a parser to remap the java source files from the map? doh! obfuscation is a false sense of confidence

By: viralpatel.net

viralpatel.net — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:25:24 +0000

Hi Ramesh,
Really nice writeup. I was looking for something like this only. Also, if you would like to see the Structure of a Java Class file read following tutorial.

Java Class file Format

Do post latest info about Java, I will definitely like to visit your site.

Thanks.

By: Manas

Manas — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:25:15 +0000

Hello there,
its nice there are people who write things that r immensely helpful to a larger community.
you have done a decent job in achieving that motive.

By: Ramesh

Ramesh — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:06:02 +0000

@James,

Thanks for posting this article on java.dzone.com.

@Shilpan,

Thanks for those kind words. I’m strongly believe in personal development and your posts are always inspiring. I’ll definitely get in touch with you for any help.

@Mark,

Thanks for reading my post. I’m glad it worked out well for you. At work, a developer should not obfuscate the code, especially if they did not write documentation (or) check-in the source code to any source code control repository.