Obfuscation and Deobfuscation

I was on Hack The Box Academy, happily reading along when the first word of the module popped up: understanding. Good.
Next word: code. Still good.
Then the third word appeared: deobfuscation.

And I just stared at it like, “How many alphabets did they use to make this word?” I tried pronouncing it five or six times. For a moment, I genuinely believed Shashi Tharoor writes simpler words 😂. Eventually, yes, I managed to say it without hurting my tongue.

Anyway, let’s move to the topic.

Obfuscation 

As the name suggest , it is process of converting simple things ( notes , words , sentences ) into complex form 😂. 
More precisely , it is the process of taking a simple , clear sentence and writing it in a complex cipher, using synonyms from a dead language, and adding alot of irrelevant words. The meaning remains preserved, but it is extremely hard to understand ( same as the name of topic obfuscation) . 

Defuscation

It is simply opposite of obfuscation. It is the process of taking unclear , messed cipher and decoding it's original, simple sentence.

Why do we need Deobfuscation ? 

It is primarily used for to completely opposing reasons:

(A) For Malicious Actors ( The "Bad Guy" )

  • To analyze the security products : An attacker might obfuscate a malicious payload to bypass the Web Application Firewall (WAF) . Then , you as a security researcher would deobfuscate the payload to understand the attack, and update the WAF's rule. 
  • To steal intellectual property : To understand and copy core logic of a competitor's obfuscate the software . 

(B) For Defenders and Developers ( The "Good Guys" )

  • Malware Analysis :  Malware authors heavily obfuscate their code to avoid detection by antivirus software and to avoid detection by hinder analysis. You as a security guy then deobfuscate the code to : 
    • Understand it's functionality ( What does it do ? ) 
    • Identify it's capabilities ( keylogging , data theft , ransomware )
    • Extract indicators of compromise ( IoC's like domain , IP address , file hashes )
    • Develop signature and counter measure. 
  • Vulnerability Research : To find weakness in obfuscated software .
  • Debugging and legacy code maintenance : To old or poorly documented code that has been obfuscated, either intentionally or as a side-effect of minification . 

Hope , you found something useful in this blog . We will come back again in order to cover this topic further in more depth like what are the techniques of obfuscation and deofuscation , moreover to this we will be also covering how deobfuscation is performed ? 


Next Blog - Obfuscation and Deobfuscation part 2 ?


 

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