Protecting Apps with Apache Cordova MS VS Extension on App Stores

Question

Just have a question about apps that are uploaded on the Windows Store, Andriod Store, and Apple Store. I have never built an App before for any of the three stores, but the Multi Hybrid Extension for Visual Studio seems to be a great start to cover all three Platforms.

How do I protect my code for apps that are uploaded to the three stores? The core development for the Apache Cordova extension is done in HTML5 and Javascript. On a regular HTML / Javascript website, the end user can simply right click and View Source of the page and see all the code I've written.

My question is, how is this protected for apps that are uploaded to the app store? Will someone be able to reverse engineer my application and get the code and simply re-sell it?

Thank you all for your time

Answer 1

You want to, develop once, deploy many. Then, you’ll want to use HTML5 to do it. You can use Apache Cordova directly, but you’ll want to use a service like Telerik AppBuilder, Adobe Phonegap or Intel XDK.

Regarding your question, your best bet is to use a good JavaScript source code obfuscation service to protect your sources before publishing. There is no such thing as a 100% full proof solution when it comes to JavaScript obfuscation, but professional tools such as JScrambler can take you a long way. At least JScrambler I know that it supports Mobile and HTML5, which is good because they make sure the resulting code is compliant.

There are other tools, even free ones. But be careful though, there are tons of other tools that do obfuscation, encoding/packing or minfication that seem to provide protection, but are reversed in a few minutes. So, unless you really know how to tell the difference, I recommend that you rely on a professional service.