Obfuscating your first script

Now that you have downloaded and Prometheus, you probably wonder how to use it. In this quick tutorial you are going to learn how to obfuscate your first file.

Note that in the following command examples lua should be replaced by your lua implementation.

Create the following file within the Prometheus main directory that you just downloaded:

hello_world.lua

print("Hello, World")

Now run the following command inside of the Prometheus directory:

lua ./cli.lua ./hello_world.lua

You may notice, that the console output looks weird. If that is the case, your terminal does not support ansi color escape sequences. You should add the --nocolors option:

lua ./cli.lua --nocolors ./hello_world.lua

This should create the following file:

hello_world.obfuscated.lua

print("Hello, World")

As you can see, the file hasn't changed at all. That is because by default prometheus is just a minifier and the code we gave it was already as small as possible. To actually obfuscate the file, prometheus must be told which obfuscation steps it should apply in which order. In order to do this, the cli provides the --preset option which allows you to specify the name of a predefined configuration. There are currently the following presets:

• Minify

• Weak

• Medium

• Strong

In order to perform the obfuscation, you need to specify that Prometheus should use the Strong preset:

lua ./cli.lua --preset Medium ./hello_world.lua

The hello_world.obfuscated.lua should now contain the obfuscated code that should still print "Hello World".

Note that using the "Strong" preset is not recommended for large projects.