Extract Source Code from Compiled App

Hi at all,

I hava a Matlab App that I want to publish to colleagues. I used mcc to compile a standalone .exe and noticed, that this .exe is openable with the explorer.

Looking inside, i found that in some cases you can at least reconstruct the paths of the packages, functions and classes, that I wrote for my app.

This brings me to my actual question: Is it possible to extract or reconstruct the Source Code from a compiled app?

Thanks and all the best,

Benjamin

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

In your release, it is known that it is possible to reconstruct code, with comments removed, and not necessarily the same variable names or exact same way of writing the code. The method of doing so is not published and Mathworks will not assist you in the process, and reported declines to be hired to decompile.

In a release after yours, an option was added to hide the paths that you are observing, and in a release after that, the encoding algorithm was changed to make decompilation more difficult.

[Benjamin Schaefer]

Thanks for your quick answer! In this case I will finally upgrade to the newest release.

Answer 2

[Bruno Luong]

"Is it possible to extract or reconstruct the Source Code from a compiled app?"

The source code is obfuscated, only TMW and confirmed hackers who know secretly the algorithm can reconstruct the source code. Mortal people cannot.