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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weak on decompiler implementation,
By
This review is from: Decompiling Java (Hardcover)
What I hoped to learn from the book was an understanding of modern Java decompilation techniques. With respect to this expectation, Nolan's book is a disappointment.
His implementation, though simple, will decompile only the most simple of byte code. Nolan points out that it is difficult to recover all legal control structures offered by Java, but is not so clear about the fact that this will never be possible with his approach (i.e. using syntactical analysis). A stable decompiler which is able to produce clean code must do some control flow and structural analysis. The book gives no account here. Regarding the other topics of the book such as obfuscation, legal issues, tool selection and case studies, there are more concise and cheaper books. Simply refer to Amazon's "Customers who bought this book also bought ...".
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fully compile down to assembler binary,
By
This review is from: Decompiling Java (Hardcover)
Decompilers are something of a black box to most programmers. Not unlike compilers. Actually Nolan shows us that the 2 are very similar in their lexical methods.
In the specific case of Java, this book may well cause unease in the reader, if you program in Java and are worried about protecting your source code. After all, it probably has proprietary methods that are not covered by any patents you might have. While you can copyright the source, Nolan points out that this may not stop someone from decompiling and reimplementing your "secret" methods. The book shows that the big problem with Java bytecode is that decompilers for it have a far easier time than decompilers for actual assembly code, whatever the specific hardware for the latter. The basic reason is that the bytecode retains extra information that a decompiler can use, whereas assembly does not have this. Like the fact that the bytecode separates data from instructions. A vital simplification to a decompiler. Nolan shows countermeasures. At the source code level, there are several good obfuscation techniques, described well enough for you to try. And these may be better than buying a commercial decompiler. Also, Nolan suggests fully compiling your Java into specific assembly binaries. One for each combination of microprocessor and operating system that you need to support. More work. But it makes a decompilation far harder. Besides, these days, you may only have to support a few combinations. The hardware may be a Pentium or a Sparc or an IBM cpu. If a Pentium, then you might only support a recent linux or Microsoft OS on top of it. If a Sparc, then you need only support a recent Solaris. While for an IBM cpu, the only choice is AIX or Apple's OS.
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deep focus,
By
This review is from: Decompiling Java (Hardcover)
If you're looking at a book on this topic, you may know something about the subject already. You even may have used one of the various decompilers available on the web, perhaps been shocked at the accuracy of the results, and were left wondering a) how it worked and b) how to stop it. You get coherent, comprehensive answers to both. There are three kinds of books about computer security: those that detail the exploitation of weaknesses, those that detail how to fix them, and those that do both. Decompiling Java manages to fall in that last category, so far as its possible for inherently insecure Java code.
Over the course of seven long chapters, Nolan discusses in depth the history of decompilation and reverse engineering (both the legal and illegal kinds), the construction of the Java Virtual Machine, the layout of Java classfile, the various types of obfuscation and code protection techniques (including the creation of a simple obfuscator), and, most importantly and uniquely, the design and implementation of an original decompiler. The book ends with a briefer discussion of a number of case studies. There's always a danger that hardcore computer books will be deadly dull; thankfully, that's not the case here. The style is light and often amusing. The most difficult chapter is the one detailing the implementation of the decompiler -- it's an especially information-dense chapter that I had to take a few pages at a time. On the other hand, the chapter does show bit-by-bit the construction of a working decompiler, so I suppose it was worthwhile. If you're interested in writing your own decompiler or in looking at the techniques the existing ones use, this is the book for you. Similarly, if you're interested in developing your own obfuscation solution or selecting in an educated way between the commercial obfuscators and code protection schemes out there, this book discusses them in greater depth than any other resource. Finally, if you're just a low-level software geek like me, you'll find plenty of interesting concepts and ideas to chew over.
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