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Kremilly
Kremilly

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ShadowJS: A Fast and Lightweight JavaScript Obfuscator Built with Rust

Hello Dev Community! 👋

Today, I want to introduce a new tool that I’ve been working on: ShadowJS – a fast, lightweight JavaScript obfuscator built with Rust. If you're looking for a way to protect your JavaScript code and prevent tampering, this might be the tool for you.

What is ShadowJS?

ShadowJS is a simple yet powerful JavaScript obfuscator designed to protect your code by converting readable identifiers into cryptic, hard-to-decipher formats. By doing so, it ensures that your proprietary logic remains safe, without sacrificing performance.

Built with Rust, ShadowJS is lightweight and fast, making it ideal for use in production environments where speed and efficiency matter.

Features

  • Fast & Lightweight: ShadowJS is built in Rust, offering speed and minimal resource usage.
  • Customizable Obfuscation: The tool generates random, hard-to-read identifiers that make it difficult for anyone to reverse-engineer your code.
  • Security Focused: It helps protect your code by converting readable variables and function names into obscure identifiers.
  • Easy to Use: Just a simple command-line interface that lets you obfuscate your JavaScript code in seconds.

How Does It Work?

ShadowJS uses regular expressions to identify JavaScript variables and function names in the code. It then replaces those identifiers with random, unique strings, keeping the rest of the JavaScript code intact.

Here’s how it works in a nutshell:

  • Reserved Words: ShadowJS doesn’t obfuscate JavaScript keywords like function, return, if, etc., to ensure the code remains valid and functional.
  • Random Identifiers: Non-reserved identifiers are replaced with random strings to obscure the code’s meaning.

Why Rust?

I chose Rust for this project because of its performance and safety guarantees. Rust ensures that ShadowJS runs efficiently, even on large JavaScript files, while also providing memory safety without needing a garbage collector.

Additionally, Rust makes it easy to build fast command-line tools, which is perfect for this kind of utility.

Installation

If you want to try out ShadowJS, here’s how you can get started:

Step 1: Install Rust

First, make sure you have Rust installed. If you don’t have it yet, follow the official instructions here.

Step 2: Install crate

cargo install shadowjs
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Usage Example

For example, to obfuscate input.js and save the result in output.min.js, simply run:

shadowjs input.js output.min.js
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That’s it! You’ve successfully obfuscated your JavaScript code with ShadowJS. 🔐

Why Should You Use ShadowJS?

JavaScript is often exposed to the public, which means that anyone can inspect and modify it. By obfuscating your code, you add an extra layer of protection. This can be particularly useful when dealing with proprietary algorithms, business logic, or preventing unauthorized tampering.

Contributing

If you find any bugs or have suggestions to improve ShadowJS, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub. I’d love to have contributions from the community to make this tool even better!

License

ShadowJS is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.


That’s all for today! I hope ShadowJS can be a helpful tool for your next project. If you have any questions or need further clarification, feel free to reach out in the comments. Let’s keep building great things! 🚀

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