JavaScript Reverse Engineering Toolkit (JSRETK)

Author: Sean Pesce

Overview

NodeJS scripts for analyzing (minified/obfuscated) JavaScript. All tools support processing of local files, remote files via HTTP(S) URL, or data from standard input.

These tools are still under heavy development, so ideas and contributions are welcome.

Requirements & Installation

System packages:

• curl
• nodejs (18.3+)

Node modules:

• escodegen
• esprima
• estraverse

Note: These tools ship with an updated version of esrefactor by Nick LaRosa. Nick's version fixes some major issues with the version of the library in NPM (see the pull request here). The PR version could also be installed directly with npm install ariya/esrefactor#pull/9/head, but I've included it here for convenience.

Tools

jsretk-strings

This script extracts string literals from JavaScript code, with similar results to running strings against a compiled binary executable. It also supports options to extract JavaScript comments and RegEx literals.

$ node jsretk-strings.js --help
Usage:

node jsretk-strings.js [OPTIONS] <JS_FILE_1> [[JS_FILE_2] ...]

Options:

	[-h|--help]		Print usage and exit
	[-P|--stdin]		Pipe data from stdin
	[-c|--comments]		Include JavaScript comments in output
	[-C|--comments-only]	Find ONLY JavaScript comments (no string/RegEx literals; overrides "-c")
	[-r|--regex]		Include Regular Expression (RegEx) literals in output
	[-R|--regex-only]	Find ONLY RegEx literals (no comments/string literals; overrides "-r")
	[-T|--templates-only]	Find ONLY template strings (no static string/RegEx literals or comments)
	[-m|--min]		Find strings of this length or longer (inclusive)
	[-M|--max]		Find strings of this length or shorter (inclusive)
	[-x|--match-regex] <ex>	Find strings that match the given Regular Expression
	[-k|--insecure]		Don't verify TLS/SSL certificates for connections when fetching remotely-hosted JS files
	[-p|--curl-path] <path>	Non-standard path/name for the curl command
	[-B|--max-buffer] <n>	Maximum size (in bytes) for remotely-fetched JS files (default: 50MB)
	[-E|--encoding] <enc>	Text encoding for local input/output files (default: "utf8")
	[-i|--interactive]	Enter interactive NodeJS prompt after completion

jsretk-unminify

WARNING: This script is unstable and non-performant in its current state.

This script attempts to un-minify JavaScript code by:

• Detecting and renaming minified variables to have unique names across the entire file (uniquify)
• Using various heuristics to make some variable names more informative
• Formatting the code for readability

Note that the current implementation can take an extremely long time to perform uniquification, so use of the -v|--verbose flag is highly recommended for monitoring progress. For some codebases (e.g., some React Native deployments), the experimental -L|--per-line flag can reduce completion time exponentially.

$ node jsretk-unminify.js --help
Usage:

node jsretk-unminify.js [OPTIONS] <JS_FILE_1> [[JS_FILE_2] ...]

Options:

	[-h|--help]		Print usage and exit
	[-P|--stdin]		Pipe data from stdin
	[-v|--verbose]		Enable verbose output
	[-o|--output-dir] <dir>	Output directory (default: "jsretk-out")
	[-O|--overwrite]	If output file(s) exist, automatically overwrite
	[-t|--tab]		Use tab characters ("\t") instead of spaces for indenting formatted code
	[-I|--indent] <n>	Number of spaces (or tabs) used for indenting formatted code (default: 4 spaces or 1 tab)
	[-r|--rename-len] <n>	Rename variables if names are shorter than or equal to this value (default: 2 characters)
	[-R|--no-rename]	Don't rename variables to unique names
	[-F|--no-format]	Don't format the code for readability
	[-C|--char-iter]	Iterate over characters instead of tokens during refactoring. Significantly slower; may produce slightly different output
	[-s|--smart-rename]	(EXPERIMENTAL) Use various heuristics to attempt to generate more informative variable names
	[-L|--per-line]		(EXPERIMENTAL) Attempt to refactor code line by line (rather than the whole file at once). Useful for some react-native deployments, but fails on many (most?) codebases
	[-k|--insecure]		Don't verify TLS/SSL certificates for connections when fetching remotely-hosted JS files
	[-p|--curl-path] <path>	Non-standard path/name for the curl command
	[-B|--max-buffer] <n>	Maximum size (in bytes) for remotely-fetched JS files (default: 50MB)
	[-E|--encoding] <enc>	Text encoding for local input/output files (default: "utf8")
	[-i|--interactive]	Enter interactive NodeJS prompt after completion

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