In this research, a new Hybrid Obfuscation Technique was proposed to prevent prohibited Reverse Engineering. The proposed hybrid technique contains three approaches; first approach is string encryption. The string encryption is about adding a mathematical equation with arrays and loops to the strings in the code to hide the meaning. Second approach is renaming system keywords to Unicode to increase the difficulty and complexity of the code. Third approach is transforming identifiers to junk code to hide the meaning and increase the complexity of the code. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the proposed Hybrid Obfuscation Technique. The experiment contains two phases; the first phase was conducting reverse engineering against java applications that do not use any protection to determine the ability of reversing tools to read the compiled code. The second phase was conducting reverse engineering against the proposed technique to evaluate the effectiveness of it. The experiment of the hybrid obfuscation technique was to test output correctness, syntax, reversed code errors, flow test, identifiers names test, methods, and classes correctness test. With these parameters, it was possible to determine the ability of the proposed technique to defend the attack. The experiment has presented good and promising results, where it was nearly impossible for the reversing tool to read the obfuscated code. Even the revealed code did not perform as well as original and obfuscated code.

Obfuscation is an encryption method. It allows the programmer to reform the code for protection. Obfuscation has promising chance to change the way of coding, where the programmer has the ability to program with any language, not necessarily English. Obfuscation, Unicode, and mathematical equations have the possibility to change strings and identifiers and to hide secret algorithms and business rules. Special dictionary is used for the string obfuscation to hide the logic of the program. The hybrid obfuscation technique will be implemented into a tool that automatically converts the code. It can be can be used for games and mobile applications for protection. With obfuscation, the application still has the ability to perform sufficiently and provide the desired output without any delays in performing timing. After obfuscating the source file, reverser still has the ability to break the object file but will not be able to read or understand and when obfuscation technique is complicated, reversing leads to error where original code disappears. In this chapter, hybrid obfuscation will be presented with examples, and obfuscation table is presented as well for future use.

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