JDATATRANS for Array Obfuscation in Java Source Code to Defeat Reverse Engineering from Decompiled Codes

Abstract: Software obfuscation or obscuring a software is an approach to defeat the practice of reverse engineering a software for using its functionality illegally in the development of another software. Java applications are more amenable to reverse engineering and re-engineering attacks through methods such as decompilation because Java class files store the program in a semi complied form called 'byte' codes. The existing obfuscation systems obfuscate the Java class files. Obfuscated source code produce obfuscated byte codes and hence two level obfuscation (source code and byte code level) of the program makes it more resilient to reverse engineering attacks. But source code obfuscation is much more difficult due to richer set of programming constructs and the scope of the different variables used in the program and only very little progress has been made on this front. Hence programmers resort to adhoc manual ways of obscuring their program which makes it difficult for its maintenance and usability. To address this issue partially, we developed a user friendly tool JDATATRANS to obfuscate Java source code by obscuring the array usages. Using various array restructuring techniques such as 'array splitting', 'array folding' and 'array flattening', in addition to constant hiding, our system obfuscate the input Java source code and produce an obfuscated Java source code that is functionally equivalent to the input program. We also perform a number of experiments to measure the potency, resilience and cost incurred by our tool.