What Is Obfuscation In Security And What Types of Obfuscation Are There? (2024)

FAQs

What Is Obfuscation In Security And What Types of Obfuscation Are There? ›

Obfuscation is an umbrella term for a variety of processes that transform data into another form in order to protect sensitive information or personal data. Three of the most common techniques used to obfuscate data are encryption, tokenization

Obfuscation means to make something difficult to understand. Programming code is often obfuscated to protect intellectual property or trade secrets, and to prevent an attacker from reverse engineering a proprietary software program. Encrypting some or all of a program's code is one obfuscation method.

Compression, encryption, and encoding are some of the most common obfuscation methods used by threat actors. Multiple methods are often used in tandem to evade a wider variety of cybersecurity tools at the initial point of intrusion.

Here is an example of deliberate obfuscation: "I cannot say that I do not disagree with you." It allows you to say "you're wrong" but leaves your victim thinking you said "you're right".

Layered obfuscation combines various obfuscation approaches into a single solution to reduce the risk of reverse engineering and attacks [8].

Data masking is the process of replacing real data with fake data, which is identical in structure and data type. For example, the phone number 212-648-3399 can be replaced with another valid, but fake, phone number, such as 567-499-3788.

Examples of this practice include disguising sensitive information within commonplace items, like a piece of paper in a book, or altering digital footprints, such as spoofing a web browser's version number.

Encryption: This is a method for controlling access to data. Obfuscation: This is a method for making something harder to see or understand.

The basic tenet of obfuscation involves scrambling objects so as to retain functionality while making objects look complicated [41]. Although requiring less effort and less computing power, obfuscation can be a cost-effective measure against reverse engineering.

Obfuscation rules define what logs to apply obfuscation actions to. Obfuscation rule actions define what attributes to look at, what text to obfuscate, and how to obfuscate (either by masking or hashing). Obfuscation expressions are named regular expressions identifying what text to obfuscate.

What is obfuscation vs encryption? ›

Encryption: This is a method for controlling access to data. Obfuscation: This is a method for making something harder to see or understand.

Regardless of the method used, the goal of obfuscation is to make the attacker unable to comprehend the code logic. This is achieved by replacing variable names, deleting unused metadata, and other techniques that make it difficult for the hacker to tamper with your code.

The main purpose of obfuscation is to protect the code from being reverse-engineered or tampered with. This helps improve the software's code security and protect intellectual property rights.

Encryption provides a higher level of security than obfuscation, but requires more processing power and resources. “Obfuscation is not meant to provide a high level of security, but rather to deter casual attackers and make it more difficult for them to reverse-engineer your code.”