One way to protect Java software from casual reverse engineering is obfuscation. Essentially, an obfuscator renames classes, variables, and packages with random/meaningless names. The application still functions correctly; the decompiled code becomes difficult to read.
There are quite a few obfuscators for Java — at least a dozen when I looked — most of which are easily used from an Ant script.
For my use I selected one with a ready-to-use Ant task: yGuard. Unfortunately, yGuard operates on .jar files only, not individual .class files or webapp .war files. Thus, I have written my own Ant script which uses yGuard and built-in Ant tasks to obfuscate .war files. Continue reading »
