gobfuscate
The facts below are what the maker publishes about gobfuscate, checked and dated. Our editors have not written about it yet.
The facts
Each one read from gobfuscate's own pages, with the date it was checked.
What it does
- Assembly limitation
- Global names and struct methods are not obfuscated in packages that contain assembly files.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Build constraints
- Global names and struct methods that appear multiple times because of build constraints are not obfuscated.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Build flags
- The command supports flags including -keeptests, -noencrypt, -nostatic, -outdir, -padding, -tags, -verbose, and -winhide.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Build options
- Flags include options for keeping tests, static linking, outputting a full GOPATH, compiler tags, verbose mode, custom hash padding, CGO-related build behavior, and hiding a Windows GUI.checked 11 Oct 2026
- CGO limitation
- Packages using CGO cannot have package names renamed, and CGO also prevents global names and struct methods from being obfuscated.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Global names
- It hashes global variable, constant, function, and newly defined type names.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Install and use
- The README shows installation with `go get -u github.com/unixpickle/gobfuscate` and use as `gobfuscate [flags] pkg_name out_path`.checked 11 Oct 2026
- License
- The repository describes the project as BSD 2-Clause licensed.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Limit: assembly and build constraints
- Global names and struct methods are not obfuscated in packages with assembly files or when names appear multiple times because of build constraints.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Limit: CGO
- Packages using CGO cannot have package names renamed, and CGO also prevents global-name and struct-method obfuscation under the stated refactoring restrictions.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Limit: constants
- The README says converting string constants to variables does not work for mixed const/int blocks.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Limit: methods
- Struct methods matching methods of imported interfaces are not renamed.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Method names
- It hashes most struct method names, but leaves methods whose names match methods of imported interfaces unchanged.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Obfuscates
- It manipulates package names, global variable and function names, type names, method names, and strings.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Package names
- It copies a subset of GOPATH and hashes package names and paths to obscure them in the executable.checked 10 Oct 2026
- Package paths
- It copies a subset of GOPATH and hashes package names and paths, which the README says can remove details such as GitHub usernames from the executable.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Purpose
- gobfuscate compiles Go binaries from obfuscated source code to make source information in the binary difficult or impossible to decipher.checked 11 Oct 2026
- Release downloads
- The GitHub releases page states that there are no releases for this repository.checked 11 Oct 2026
- String constant limitation
- String constants in mixed const/int blocks are not converted successfully.checked 10 Oct 2026
- String handling
- Strings are replaced with functions that XOR masked byte slices to reconstruct the string.checked 11 Oct 2026
The company
- Maker
- The GitHub owner profile identifies unixpickle as Alex Nichol and describes him as an AI researcher, hobby web developer, and math geek.checked 11 Oct 2026
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