Jargon buster – Source Code, Obfuscation and Decompilation

By the turn of the last century, the multi billion dollar software industry evolved to solve complex problems facing humans from a variety of industries and is continuing to prove its worth. Be it tracking a parcel as it travels across the planet or be it communications happening over a piece of device between two ends of the world or automating the complete flow of processes followed across industry verticals, software industry has come a long way and is constantly redefining itself for the road ahead. The foundation for all this revolution is the millions and millions of lines of software code written using a variety of languages and on a host of devices.The source code is the heart of the actual software package and with processes depending upon its origin forms the complete package that is being used across machines to perform their respective tasks. The source code is actually ‘compiled’ in to machine language by means of underlying ‘engines’ and is then packaged  to run on various machines. This very package is controlled by patents and copyrights to protect from being replicated or copied and is the intellectual property of the individual/company that hatched the idea and developed it in the form of software. Then came the concept of code decompilation which literally translates in to stealing this intellectual property so that the one that decompiles the code don’t have to rewrite the software all over again but can modify or alter it based on needs. Code Decompilation has a history as long as writing code itself and was started on legitimate grounds to understand programs from internal peers to avoid ‘reinventing the wheel’ but as it traveled outside the network, it went on to become a piracy tool which deserves another similar article for more understanding.And on to the last topic on these lines which is Source Code Obfuscation. On a high level, this can be defined as a technique employed to ‘mask’ the source code from being decompiled. This is done in various ways like scrambling the source code to be returned as an unusable junk of binary code when decompiled or encrypting the variables used in the code or altogether translating the process flow itself so that the ‘idea’ of the code is not revealed to the decompiler.Companies and individuals have always employed ways to control their intellectual properties but so have the pilferers, finding ways intelligently around these properties. This had been a growing concern for many technology companies such that developing software to prevent plagiarism has in itself formed a niche segment in the highly competitive security software market. These companies make what is called the obfuscator that prevent decompiling or re-engineering the source code developed in most of the languages.