Paranoid

String obfuscator for Android applications.

Usage

In order to make Paranoid work with your project you have to apply the Paranoid Gradle plugin to the project. Please notice that the Paranoid plugin must be applied after the Android plugin.

buildscript {
  repositories {
    mavenCentral()
  }

  dependencies {
    classpath 'com.joom.paranoid:paranoid-gradle-plugin:0.3.14'
  }
}

apply plugin: 'com.android.application'
apply plugin: 'com.joom.paranoid'

Now you can just annotate classes with strings that need to be obfuscated with @Obfuscate. After you project compiles every string in annotated classes will be obfuscated.

The plugin must be applied to every Gradle module that has classes with @Obfuscate annotation.

Configuration

Paranoid plugin can be configured using paranoid extension:

paranoid {
  // ...
}

The extension contains the following properties:

• obfuscationSeed - Integer. A seed that can be used to make obfuscation stable across builds. Default value is null, which means that the seed is computed from input files on each build.
• applyToBuildTypes - Allows to apply paranoid transform for specific build types. Possible values are 'ALL', 'NONE', 'NOT_DEBUGGABLE'. Default value is 'ALL'
• enabled — boolean. Allows to disable obfuscation for the project. Default value is true. Deprecated. Use applyToBuildTypes = 'NONE'

How it works

Let's say you have an Activity that contains some string you want to be obfuscated.

@Obfuscate
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
  private static final String QUESTION = "Q: %s";
  private static final String ANSWER = "A: %s";

  @Override
  protected void onCreate(final Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main_activity);

    final TextView questionTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.questionTextView);
    questionTextView.setText(String.format(QUESTION, "Does it work?"));

    final TextView answerTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.answerTextView);
    answerTextView.setText(String.format(ANSWER, "Sure it does!"));
  }
}

The class contains both string constants (QUESTION and ANSWER) and string literals. After compilation this class will be transformed to something like this.

@Obfuscate
public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {
  private static final String QUESTION = Deobfuscator.getString(4);
  private static final String ANSWER = Deobfuscator.getString(5);

  protected void onCreate(final Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.main_activity);

    final TextView questionTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.questionTextView);
    questionTextView.setText(String.format(Deobfuscator.getString(0), Deobfuscator.getString(1)));

    final TextView answerTextView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.answerTextView);
    answerTextView.setText(String.format(Deobfuscator.getString(2), Deobfuscator.getString(3)));
  }
}

License

Copyright 2023 SIA Joom

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

    http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.