Obfuscate C Code

[shy cedar]

Looking for recommendations to obfuscate strings and function names within my code to make licensing harder to reverse and mitigate. Any projectgs or public tools that you're aware of?

[grizzled umbra]

When your question is answered use !solved to mark the question as resolved.

Remember to ask specific questions, provide necessary details, and reduce your question to its simplest form. For tips on how to ask a good question use !howto ask.

[pallid cairn]

Looking for recommendations to obfuscate strings
Hardcoded strings? That's pretty impossible (you could store an encrypted version, then manually decrypt it at runtime, but... do you really want to do that?)

and function names
These aren't retained anyway (unless of course you compile with debug information enabled, which would be... silly in this context)

[shy cedar]

I have a license thats baked into the binary. The binary operates in segmented closed networks.

So I have limited control over it - just trying to make it more difficult for RE

[pallid cairn]

just trying to make it more difficult for RE
Ironically, the harder you make it, the more people are interested in trying to break it.

[shy cedar]

Yeah but that's not a solution to tell mgmt lol...

And in this case, a little sophistifcation would go a long way.

[open vault]

I'm probably misinterpreting something, but why would you want to obfuscate a license? Isn't it desired for everyone to know your own license of the software you are developing?

[shy cedar]

The binary is built for the specific hardware. Its an embedded application

[open vault]

I see, I thought you were referring to a software license type (like the MIT license many repositories have), nevermind me

[frigid fulcrum]

For strings: template meta programming to obfuscate your strings at compile time and decrypt them at runtime
And for function names: don't ship the symbols?

[shy cedar]

Yeah i was debating doing it this way or a stub like UPX does.

[frigid fulcrum]

UPX is easy to unpack.
Either buy a solution like VMP or develop your own one.
But I thought your application was running on bare metal? so it would be hard getting any of those to work.

[vestal horizon]

i might not be of much help but i saw this somewhere else, you can look up code obfuscation for cyber security probably the same thing. i think they used metasploit for that but like the whole code is obfuscated to get around antivirus but again idk 100% but look into cybersecurity forums