Babel Obfuscator

Babel 5.0 Released

2011-12-28T10:05:00.003+01:00

I am happy to announce that Babel Obfuscator 5.0 has been released. This new release includes the new user interface and lot of improvements, among them the porting of the whole code to .NET Framework 4.0.

Added new Babel Obfuscator User Interface
Compiled against .NET Framework 4.0
Added obfuscated stack decoder
Improved obfuscation speed
Improved --proxy and --cleanattrs command line options
Bug fixes (see Release Notes)

Existing customers with a valid license subscription can require to upgrade their license sending an email to support@babelfor.net.

We have more to do for the 2012. Improve the user interface, add more obfuscation features and we are eager to hear from you what are your suggestions. So don't hesitate to write us about what we can improve in Babel Obfuscator.

Thank you to all the customers that are supporting this project.

With regards,

Alberto.

Babel Obfuscator 4.3.0.0 Released

2011-09-30T15:00:00.002+02:00

Babel Obfuscator 4.3.0.0 has been releases.

This release adds a new feature: Values and Array Encryption, plus a
lot of improvements and bug fixes:

Added inline constants and arrays encryption
Added support for Silverlight 5 Beta XAP packages
Improved enhanced control flow obfuscation when using encrypted values feature
Added regular expression to filter dynamic proxy calls
Added targetAssembly and applyToMembers attributes to XML rules
General bug fixes (see release notes)

More details are available at: http://www.babelfor.net/ReleaseNotes.aspx

You can download this new release from our Download section:

http://www.babelfor.net/Downloads.aspx

Thank you to all users that are supporting Babel Obfuscator.
With regards,

Alberto Ferrazzoli

Next Babel 4.3 Release

2011-08-02T09:02:00.005+02:00

We are near to release the new version 4.3 of Babel Obfuscator. This new version will handle encryption of inline values and arrays and it will be available in all Babel licenses. With that feature the user will be able to add an extra layer of protection.

This will also benefit "enhanced control flow obfuscation", with the possibility to encrypt switch jumps.

With regards,

Alberto

Babel 4.2 Released

2011-06-18T16:37:00.001+02:00

Babel Obfuscator 4.2 has been released and is available for download at:

http://www.babelfor.net/Downloads.aspx

The features available with this new release are:

Added proxy call generation for Silverlight assemblies
Added System.Enum type removal
Improved control flow obfuscation
Improved hash string encryption protection
Better support for MSBuild
Supported execution on system enforcing Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)
General bug fixes (see release notes)

Existing users should require an updated license file sending an email at:

support@babelfor.net

Enjoy this new release!

Babel 4.0 Released

2011-04-25T13:01:00.001+02:00

Hello All,

After quite long time, Babel 4.0 has been released.

The features available with this new release are:

* Supported Silverlight for Windows Phone 7, XBOX360 XNA Framework and .NET Micro Framework

* XAML and BAML Obfuscation

* Merging Support for WPF and Silverlight Assemblies

* Dynamic Proxy Calls to External and Internal Methods

* Code Instrumentation

* Custom Character Set Obfuscation

* New and Improved Control Flow Obfuscation

* Debug PDB Symbol File Generation

* Merging Support for Debug PDB Symbol Files

* Code Optimizations

* Improved Renaming of Compiler Generated Code

* Support x64 .NET Images

I want to thank all the Babel's users and people who helped supporting the project, including: Pipis, Hector and Sean.

Thank you very much.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

2010-12-24T12:34:00.001+01:00

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Babel new features

2010-08-28T12:44:00.001+02:00

Hello.

I am working on the next babel release (version 4.0) and I'd like to
open a discussion about the new features that will be available with
this release.

First of all, babel has been undergone to an optimization process to
speed up the overall obfuscation time.
From the first tests the obfuscation time seems is reduced of about
twenty percent.

The new features that will be available are:

(Enterprise)
* Dynamic proxy call to external and internal methods
(Professional)
* Possibility to choose whatever character set to rename symbols
* Improved dead code removal: the user can now specify "dead" entry
point where to start removing.

There will be also a new Enterprise feature that for now it will
remain a little secret, but it's a very big one feature that is
presently under development.

Of course this new release will have bug fixes and improved
obfuscation reliability for new W** technologies.

The bad news is that probably the price will be slightly raised but
this increase will not affect all the pesent users that will have
their update at no extra charge.

So the release date is to be defined but my idea is that it will be
available for September or October at most.

Finally I will like to thanks all the babel users.

Best regards,

Alberto

Babel 3.5 Released

2010-04-23T16:38:00.002+02:00

Babel 3.5 is finally out!

These are the new release features:

Support for .NET Framework 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010
Support Compact Framework
Resource Encryption
Embed Assembly
New Protection Against Disassemblers

There are also a lot of fixes made on previous version. The details are available at:

http://www.babelfor.net/ReleaseNotes.aspx

The User's Guide has been updated and some useful obfuscation tips are available there.
The web site has been changed a little and a new download section is available with downloads for additional unofficial tools:

NAnt babel Task
A Graphic Interface for babel.exe
A simple WPF application to deobfuscate stack trace using map files
The old babel release 2.0.0.1

I would like to thanks all the users that have contribute to this release, expecially Pipis for his advices and for having built an user interface for babel.

Way To Next 3.5 Release

2010-03-22T00:37:00.002+01:00

Hello all.

I'd like to share some good news about next Babel release 3.5.

This new release is close to be delivery and there are some important features added.

These features target both Professional and Enterprise edition but also the free edition will get some important bug fixes and improvements especially on the control flow obfuscation feature.

The new features are:

1) Resource encryption: all managed resources will be encrypted into the obfuscated target assembly.

2) Assembly embedding: instead of being fully merged an assembly can be embedded into another assembly and loaded by the main assembly at runtime. Embedding can be used instead of merging when there is no needs to fully obfuscate a dependency assembly.

3) Anti refelction tricks: added new tricks to stop reflection tools like Reflector 6 (and other tools).

4) Support for .NET 4.0 RC

5) WPF GUI application to de-obfuscate stack trace.

Resource encryption will be available to Enterprise users only, Professional edition will get features 2 and 3. Support for NET 4.0 and stack trace de-obfuscator GUI are available for all editions.

There are also few bug fixes targeting mainly the merge feature. A detailed change log will be available on the web site when Babel 3.5 will be released.

Hope you like these new features.

Best regards,

Alberto

Babel 3.0.0.0 Released

2010-02-21T15:18:00.003+01:00

Dear babel users.

After quite a long time a new version of babel has been released. As you probably know the main difference with babel 2.0 is that now babel runs under a commercial license and is no more a free software. I don't want to tell the reasons about this turn, they are quite a few. Anyway, this new version comes with a lot of new features with respect the previous:

Assembly Merging and MSIL Encryption and revisited String Encryption are some of that.
Babel is now delivered in three different edition:

Free
Professional
Enterprise

Each edition includes a different set of feature.

The Free is the least featured edition. It can be used for free and it has almost the same capabilities of babel 2.0.

I worked a lot to bring to you this new product and I hope you like it.

Babel 3.0.0.0 is now hosted at:

http://www.babelfor.net

Best Regards, Alberto Ferrazzoli

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T09:45:00.002+01:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all friends of babel.

Look at:

http://www.santas.net/howmerrychristmasissaid.htm

How Merry Christmas is said around the world.

Bye

Alberto Ferrazzoli.

Babel 2.0.0.0 Has Been Released

2009-07-28T21:17:00.002+02:00

Babel 2.0.0.0 is entirely a new application. First the dependency from Microsoft Phoenix Framework was removed, so it isn't necessary to install Phoenix Framework RDK. This means that also Visual Studio 2008 family isn't required.

This new version introduce a feature called Dead Code Elimination. Dead Code Elimination remove from the target assembly all unused methods, properties, events that are not used internally (constructor are left untouched because removing them may cause problem with reflection API).

A lot of bugs from previous 1.5 version has been fixed. Because this is a completely reworked application take care to test it very well before substitute the previous 1.5.
I did my tests and they went pretty well but I know that I may miss something so beware!

Bye.
Alberto

Babel Summertime

2009-06-08T22:11:00.002+02:00

Summer is just around the corner and these days my writing source code rate is constantly decreasing.
Babel 1.5 has been around for a while and presently I have some fixes to release, mostly thanks to your feedback. So next babel release will be a maintenance release with no feature added.

I'am thinking about porting babel to Mono platform, making babel run on Linux as well as Mac.
I don't know if this is even possible but I would like to try.
I never heard about an obfuscator running under Mono and it will be great to have babel run on Linux. I am only a little scared about the amount of work to porting all the code.

Babel 1.5 Released

2009-03-23T21:14:00.002+01:00

Babel 1.5 is ready to be downloaded and I would like to tell you some good news.

I fixed a major bug in this new version about obfuscation of generic static fields.

Moreover obfuscation agent was improved and now application that use built in System.Configuration.SettingsBase type should behave correctly.

The agent now knows some of the types provided by WPF that should not be obfuscated...

Onestly I have made some test on WPF applications (very little GUI apps) and babel performed well, but for large projects I have some doubts regarding its reliability.

If you had the time to test babel with WPF, WCF and these kind of new technologies please let me know your impressions.

Last but not least, thank you very much for using babel and helping me to improve it.

Bye,

Alberto.

Babel Obfuscator Service

2009-02-26T20:38:00.007+01:00

Hello

This week I have coded a babel service (babel obfuscator service) that I'd like to present on this post. This is a Windows service that works to obfuscate a massive number of .NET assemblies using mechanism based on watched folders.

The service monitor one folder and when an assembly is copied into thet folder it starts babel obfuscation putting the obfuscated assembly and the related map file and console output to a destination folder.

This service is useful when you need to obfuscate a lot of assemblies and you don't want to bother with DOS command line.

It works also with signed assembly. You just need to copy also the .snk file with your signed assembly.

I think this can be a valid substitute to a GUI interface for an obfuscator: the GUI in this case is Explorer itself.

Babel obfuscator service can be configured by means of xml file.

Follow a video of babel service at work. In the video the service is used to obfuscate the asseblies of SharpDevelop 3.0 in less then 2 minutes.

Notes on 1.4 Release

2009-02-22T15:12:00.003+01:00

Hi all.

About one month has passed from the release 1.4 and I like to hear from you how babel is performing.

During the last month I have fixed one bug on static field onfuscation for generic types. I know that it can be quite difficult catch a bug on this kind of application that are not a crash of the obfuscator itself. It is likely that the obfuscated target crashes instead.

So if you experienced a situation like that: your application crashes after being obfuscated, let me know, and if there is a bug I will fix and release a new version of babel as soos as possible.

Another note about the obfuscation agent.

During the development I have coded a bounch of rule into the agent.

These rules are printed into the console output during obfuscation. If you think that your application does not work after obfuscation because a rule is missing please let me know.

I really appreciate your help so don't esitate to send me your user experience.

Best Regards.

Alberto.

Babel 1.4 Released

2009-01-30T23:05:00.002+01:00

After a week spent on testing babel 1.4 I have decided to release the binaries.

I am quite happy about the tests results. Unfortunatly 64 bit support is not complete: I have found that executables once obfuscated run always in WOW64. Whereas dlls seem to run into 64 bit environment if obfuscated without inserting invalid opcodes. Seem that something is wrong into the PE executable so that the OS loader force the WOW64 subsystem to start. Untill now I don't have understood the reason completely so the 64 bit support for now is dalayed.

Bye.

Alberto

Next 1.4 Release

2009-01-22T20:47:00.002+01:00

Long time has passed from release 1.3 and now the new release of babel is close to be released. I hope to close all the tests in this week and upload the 1.4 binaries at the begin of next one.

I would like to thanks all the people that download babel. Thank you for your support and for the time you spend to report to me bugs and feelings.

The 1.4 release have some major changes from previous release:

First of all the obfuscator engine was totally rewritten and this took a lot of time to deveop and test. This new engine fix some bugs that occurred with obfuscation of generic types and also introduce obfuscation of generic type arguments. The new engine was tested also with the code autogenerated by LINQ query and it seem to perform very well.

The major improvement is the introduction of obfuscator agent. The agent performs a code static analysis before obfuscation process to find all the symbols that should not to be obfuscated because they will probably break the resulting obfuscated assembly. Agent should improve obfuscation reliability without using rule files (that are also important and of course not removed in this new version).

Another improvement is in string encryption. Now it is possible to encrypt string of assembly where you don't have access to the source code. In version 1.3 string encryption was possible only by inserting two methods into the assembly suited to encrypt and decrypt strings. Although this custom encryption offers a good protection, it is impossible to use when the source code is not available. So when encrypting strings of assemblies that are not proprietary, babel insert a custom decryption method into the obfuscated target.

Also 64 bit fans will enjoy this new version because I have inserted the capability to disable injection of bad IL opcodes so that it is possible to run agnostic CPU asseblies into 64 bit OS (see issue 8).

Another major feature of version 1.4 are XML mapping files. I have to say that is a preview that should need more attention in future release. Mapping files should contains enough information to reconstruct obfuscated call stack. Presently I have not developed an application able to decrypt stack trace but mapping file are a first step towards this aim.

Ok, I hope you like next babel version 1.4.

Best Regards

Alberto.

Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year

2008-12-24T20:47:00.003+01:00

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

I hope that the new year brings you happiness and only the best things life can bring.

And may all your projects become reality!

Plans for next release v.1.4

2008-11-13T20:05:00.006+01:00

I am working on the next release of babel. That will be tagged version 1.4.

This version will improve obfuscation reliability with the new agent engine.

Babel current version 1.3 has the obfuscator engine that basically obfuscate all types, methods properties and so on according to their visibility.

With the assembly so obfuscated there is no guaranty that during execution everithing goes fine.

Most of the time a runtime exception may occurs with obfuscated types that are reflected.

For istance if you have a private enum type used to enumerate the names of properties stored into some file you may code something like:

private enum MyProperty

{

Height,

Width,

Color

}

string[] availableProperties = Enum.GetNames(typeof(MyProperty)) ;

...

This code after obfuscation may became:

private enum a

{

}

string[] availableProperties = Enum.GetNames(typeof(a)) ;

so at the end the property names will be (a, b, c) and the program will no run as expected.

In babel version 1.3 so you are forced to write an XML rule file with a rule that block the oobfuscation of the enum type MyProperty.

With obfuscation agent the obfuscated assembly is parsed before obfuscation and all the types that may cause problem are left out from renaming.

The agent should take care of many rules and dig also into IL code to do his job increasing the total obfuscator processing time but I think is a great feature.

To write the obfuscation agent I had to change the babel obfuscator engine. This new engine is faster then the one in version 1.3 and it also fixes some bug that occurs with generic types.

These days I am debugging this new engine and after that I will start to code the agent.

Another think I like to change in v.1.4 is string encryption.

If you used babel string encryption you know that you have to provide code to encrypt and decrypt strings to the obfuscator. This is a nice feature because you can customize your encryption algorithm but have also its drawback (maybe):

You cannot encrypt strings of assemblies where the code is not avaliable (try to think a way to overcome this limitation with babel 1.3).

So I'd like to insert a basic encryption algorith to the obfuscated assemblies that do not provide their encryption and decryption function.

Another aspect that I want to take care is 64 bit compatibility.

Recently a bug was notified about obfuscation of assembly targetin 64 bit platform (issue id 8). This bug turn out to be due to the invalid IL opcodes inserted to the beginning of every method. These bad opcodes prevent Lutz Roeder .NET Reflector (unfortunately not ILDASM) to show the method IL. But on 64 bit platform, the IL of assemblies compiled with "Any CPU" is validated by runtime before execution, and because the obfuscated MSIL is not valid, the assembly is loaded into WOW64 subsystem. If the obfuscated assembly is a dll refereced by an executable running in full 64 bit environment, Kaboom! the application crash in a very bad way.

Now I think that this kind of IL obfuscation that break execution in 64 bit environment does not add so much to the IL scrabling performed by babel so I think that this feature should be removed in future release.

What do you think about?

Please use this blog to discuss about babel feature or about obfuscation in general.

Your post will be usefull to me to improve babel and also to other people that intend to protect their asseblies.

Babel Obfuscator Blog

2008-11-11T21:46:00.000+01:00

Hi this is the new blog created to discuss about Babel Obfuscator.

Please leave here your comments about babel.

I will use this blog to give you some news about the developing status,

feature that I'd like to add, and some useful hints for get the best from babel.

Please post post and post!

Thank you,

Bye