Readable text in dissassembled code

Question

is there any widely used procedure for hiding readable strings? After debugging my code i found a lot of plain text. I can use some simple encryption (Caesar cipher etc...) but this solution will totally slow down my code. Any ideas? Thanks for help

Answer 1

No, there is no widely used method for hiding referenced strings.

At some point an accessed string would have to be decrypted and this would reveal the key/method and your decryption becomes just obfuscation. If somebody wants to read all your referenced strings he could easily write some script to just convert them all to be readable.

I can't think of any reason to obfuscate strings like that. They are only visible to someone that analyses your executable. Those people would at the same time also be capable to reverse engineer your deobfuscation an apply it to all strings.

If secrecy of strings is vital to the security of your application, you have to rethink that.

Sidenote: There is no way that deciphering strings in C will slow down your application ...Except your application is full of strings and you do something very inefficient in the deciphering. Have you tested this?