Speaking as someone who foolishly had his laptop stolen with no recent backups, I can speak a little more on this.
In my case I wish it was easier to decompile from an apk package - but here's what I found. I could use something like AppManager to get my apk on to the sdcard, then I could rename this as a jar and look inside. It was easy to get image files, XML layout files had been encoded with a binary format I forget the name of, but not easy to restore. But worst of all, the only thing I could see in classes.dex was a bunch of commands which were more or less at a machine language, even after using tools such as dedexer. A million miles from the original Java source code and about as useful as an ice cube maker in Siberia. Maybe I missed something (in many ways I wish I did), but there was no way to recapture my app's Java source from a dex file and the quickest way for me was to write the whole darn thing again, albeit referring very occasionally to the mostly unreadable dex files. On Mar 31, 2:35 pm, David Turner <[email protected]> wrote: > For what is worth, most .class file obfuscators will work with dex, i.e. the > resulting obfuscated .class file should > be succesfully translated into a working .dex file. That may be a temporary > counter-measure if you worry about > having your applications decompiled. > > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 3:27 PM, Al Sutton <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Dexdump (included in the SDK) can get you to the assembly code level, so > > you'd then have to hunt around for the checks, remove, and re-compile. > > > Unfortunately there is little that can be done to prevent reverse > > engineering and recompilation unless you totally lock down the app > > installation process (e.g. the iPhone way), and even then there are no > > guarantees...http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2009/03/iphone-develope.html > > > Al. > > > --- > > > * Written an Android App? - List it athttp://andappstore.com/* > > > ====== > > Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the > > company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, > > 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. > > > The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not > > necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's > > subsidiaries. > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: [email protected] > > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stoyan Damov > > Sent: 31 March 2009 14:16 > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: [android-discuss] Re: Piracy and app "protection" > > > On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Jean-Baptiste Queru <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > The dex format is actually well documented, there are official tools > > > to work with it (e.g. dexdump) as well as third-party tools. There's > > > nothing to reverse engineer, it's all out there. > > > So, one can reverse engineer a .dex into source code, remove any > > protection, > > recompile, re-sign with his key and thus remove the protection of any app > > for Android? > > > Cheers > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
