Securing a client-side Java application

Question

Recently I've been developing a client-side Java Swing application for a client, and I've had a creeping concern that at any given time the client could simply take a snapshot build of the system and run-off with it.

The app needs to be connected to the internet in order to do anything, and I was hoping on getting some tips on how I could put some sort of security in-place to prevent the system from working if I wanted to ie he may copy/install the application somewhere else without me knowing about it (edit from the comment here ).

I'd need this to be fairly transparent to the client, and it wouldn't need to be 100% robust as the client is not technically competent and is unlikely to try to 'crack' any security that is there.

Any tips would be much appreciated!

Thanks

Answer 1

I think you're going to want to look into code obfuscation:

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/~collberg/Research/Students/DouglasLow/obfuscation.html

http://java-source.net/open-source/obfuscators