Re: Ada News Brief - 96-05-24.txt [1/1]

[dewar@cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)]

Mike says

"JBC is *very* easily decompiled. All class member names are directly
accessible in the class file, as are all classes and symbols referenced
from that class. These names are exposed to support Java's run-time
binding; a moment's reflection makes it very clear that this cannnot be
otherwise. You don't have to take my word on this; the details are in
the Java Virtual Machine spec, particularly section 2, the class file
format. It was less than a week's effort to extract use, dependency, and
structure graphs from Java class files. The only information not
directly available are local variable names.
"

Unconvincing. Of course the names of standard classes are exposed, this
is no different from seeing the name SQRT in a Fortran program (where
SQRT is in a dynamic link library). But you can shroud the names of your
own classes if you are interested in obfuscation, just as you would
shroud variable names in other circumstances.