Does it make sense to obsfucate Javascript? The only clear benefits I can see are to hide code (albeit non-proprietary in nature since it's client-side) from prying eyes and as a minimizer since often Javascript obsfucators do minimization as well.
I do not think that JavaScript obfuscation is worth the effort for concealment purposes in most general scenarios. However, minification is worth-it, for many reasons, which as you mentioned, has the minor side-effect of obfuscating code as well.
Well, if its not some cutting edge javascript code that should not be easily copied and reproduced, and the script is not too big in bytes, i would not do the bother. Its a bit hassle to do the obfuscating each time you need a deploy, and the benefit is small.
That is, the script is not too big , and code does not to be protected.
(even obfuscation does not really protect your code, just make it abit harder to understand)
I have used the YUI Builder, I find it good for reducing the size of my javascript a great deal. So minimization aspect of the obfuscation is a very useful in itself.
In terms of security, I guess anything you can do to make it harder for malicious user to figure out how your stuff works, the better off you are.
Lastly most obsfuscators will give you warnings or errors when it encounters badly written javascript, and as a whole will improve the quality of your code as well.
So in summary
Cons: You gotta run the obfuscator
Pros:
Smaller files
Harder for malicious users to figure out how your stuff works.
Higher quality javascript (if you listen to the obsfuscator).
I don't think it is worthwhile, because anyone motivated enough to get your code can still get it. As far as minimizing, I don't bother, since gzip mitigates the need for that.
Obfuscating is a side effect of minimizing. Your variables, functions, etc. are renamed to the shortest possible length to save space. Otherwise, minimizers would simply be white space removers.
While definitely possible to tell what your code is doing even if it was obfuscated, it will be much harder to someone "casually" looking at your code.
The Dojo library has a component called ShrinkSafe. It will compress your JavaScript file and will obfuscate the code some. This way, you can keep the originals somewhere and then release only the ones ran through ShrinkSafe.
Related
This is a generic question
I've seen javascript on some websites which is obfuscated
When you try to deobfuscate the code using standard deobfuscators (deobfuscatejavascript.com, jsnice.org and jsbeautifier.org)
, the code is not easily deobfuscated
I know it's practically impossible to avoid deobfuscation. I want to make it really tough for an attacker to deobfuscate it
Please suggest some ways I can acheive this
Should I write my own obfuscator, then obfuscate the output with another online obfuscator. Will this beat it?
Thanks in advance
P.S: I tried google closure compiler, uglifyjs, js-obfuscator and a bunch of other tools. None of them (used individually or in combination) are able to beat the deobfuscators
Obfuscation can be accomplished at several levels of sophistication.
Most available obfuscators scramble (shrink?) identifiers and remove whitespace. Prettyprinting the code can restore nice indentation; sweat and lots of guesses can restore sensible identifier names with enough effort. So people say this is weak obfuscation. They're right; sometimes it is enough.
[Encryption is not obfuscation; it is trivially reversed].
But one can obfuscate code in more complex ways. In particular, one can take advantage of the Turing Tarpit and the fact that reasoning about the obfuscated program can be hard/impossible in practice. One can do this by scrambling the control flow and injecting opaque control-flow control predicates that are Turing-hard to reason about; you can construct such predicates in a variety of ways. For example, including tests based on constructing artificial pointer-aliasing (or array subscripting, which is equivalent) problems of the form of "*p==*q" for p and q being pointers computed from messy complicated graph data structures.
Such obfuscated programs are much harder to reverse engineer because they build on problems that are Turing hard to solve.
Here's an example paper that talks about scrambling control flow. Here's a survey on control flow scrambling, including opaque predicates.
What OP wants is an obfuscator that operates at this more complex level. These are available for Java and C#, I believe, because building program analyzers to determine (and harness) control flow is relatively easy once you have a byte code representation of the program rather than just its text. They are not so available for other languages. Probably just a matter of time.
(Full disclosure: my company builds the simpler kind of obfuscators. We think about the fancier ones occasionally but get distracted by shiny objects a lot).
The public de-obfuscators listed by you use not much more than a simple eval() followed by a beautifier to de-obfuscate the code. This might need several runs. It works because the majority of obfuscators do their thing and add a function at the end to de-obfuscate it enough to allow the engine to run it. It is a simple character replacement (a kind of a Cesar cipher) in most cases and an eval() is enough to get some code, made more or less readable by a beautifier after that.
To answer your question: you can make it tougher ("tougher" in the sense that just c&p'ing it into a de-obfuscator doesn't work anymore) by using some kind of "encryption" that uses a password the the code gets from the server after the first round of de-obfuscation and uses a relative path that the browser completes instead of a full path. That would need manual intervention. Build that path in a complicated and non-obvious way and you have a deterrent for the average script-kiddie.
In general: you need something to de-obfuscate the script that is not in the script itself.
But beware: it does only answer your question, that is, it makes it impossible to de-obfuscate by simple c&p into one of those public de-obfuscators and not more. See Ira's answer for the more complex stuff.
Please be aware of the reasons to obfuscate code:
hide malicious intent/content
hide stolen code
hide bad code
a pointy haired boss/investor
other (I know what that is, but I am too polite to say)
Now, what do the people think, if they see your obfuscated code? That your investor insisted on it to give you money to write that little browser game everyone loves so much?
JavaScript is interpreted from clear text by your browser. If a browser can do it, so can you. It's the nature of the beast. There are plenty of other programming languages out there that allow you to compile/black box before distribution. If you are hell-bent on protecting your intellectual property, compile the server side data providers that your JavaScript uses.
No JavaScript obfuscation or protection can say it makes it impossible to reverse a piece of code. That being said there are tools that offer a very simple obfuscation that is easy to reverse and others that actually turn your JavaScript into something that is extremely hard and unfeasible to reverse. The most advanced product I know that actually protects your code is Jscrambler. They have the strongest obfuscation techniques and they add code locks and anti-debugging features that turn the process of retrieving your code into complete hell. I've used it to protect my apps and it works, it's worth checking out IMO
I really like codemirror.net
And I am now using it just to render some large snippets of code in my web site.
My question is:
Should I really opt for a lighter library since I don't use any of the online-live-editing-features that code mirror gives me ?
This is a real issue for me because I am displaying snippets of 10000 lines of code and a fast renderer matters.
Can somebody technically defend or accuse my usage of code mirror ?
Thanks,
p.s.
Please guys don't suggest to do the parsing/rendering on the serverside. It needs to be done on the browser for many reasons I need not to explain.
Your question is subjective, but I'll try and answer.
All else being equal, the library with the least number of features you don't need will be the best for you. If you never plan on allowing editing, you probably are paying some overhead cost in rendering for it that isn't being utilized. For that reason I'd say CodeMirror probably isn't the best choice.
That said, use whatever works for you. Does CodeMirror work for you? Do you understand it and is it comfortable? Is it fast enough for your intended purpose, or do you feel it is bogging down with your file sizes? Is editing ever on the roadmap for your application? These are the questions you need to be asking and only you can answer.
People have written plenty of things they knew weren't the most efficient and sometimes were downright slow, but it was easier and they knew it was fast enough. Not every program has to be sleek and super optimized if it requires too much effort to get there for what you'll get out of it.
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I need to write a GUI related javascript library. It will give my website a bit of an edge (in terms of functionality I can offer) - up until my competitors play with it long enough to figure out how to write it by themselves (or finally hack the downloaded script). I can accept the fact that it will be emulated over time - thats par for the course (its part of business). I just want to have a few months breathing space where people go "Wow - how the f*** did they do that?" - which gives me a few months of free publicity and some momentum to move onto other things.
To be clear, I am not even concerned about hard core hackers who will still hack the source - thats a losing battle not worth fighting (and in any case I accept that my code is not "so precious"). However, what I cannot bear, is the idea of effectively, simply handing over all the hard work that would have gone into the library to my competitors, by using plain javascript that anyone can download and use. If someone is going to use what I have worked on, then I sure as hell don't want to simply hand it over to them - I want them to work hard at decoding it. If they can decode it, they deserve to have the code (they'll most likely find out they could have written better code themselves - they just didn't have the business sense to put all the [plain vanilla] components in that particular order) - So, I'm not claiming that no one could have written this (which would be a preposterous claim in any case) - but rather, what I am saying is that no one (up to now) has made the functionality I am talking about, available to this particular industry - and I (thinking as an entrepreneur rather than a geek/coder), want to milk it for all its worth, while it lasts i.e until it (inevitably) gets hacked.
It is an established fact that not one website in the industry I am "attacking" has this functionality, so the value of such a library is undeniable and is not up for discussion (i.e. thats not what I'm asking here).
What I am seeking to find out are the pros and cons of obfuscating a javascript library, so that I can come to a final decision.
Two of my biggest concerns are debugging, and subtle errors that may be introduced by the obfuscator.
I would like to know:
How can I manage those risks (being able to debug faulty code, ensuring/minimizing against obfuscation errors)
Are there any good quality industry standard obfuscators you can recommend (preferably something you use yourself).
What are your experiences of using obfuscated code in a production environment?
If they can decode it, they deserve to have the code (they'll most likely find out they could have written better code themselves - they just didn't have the business sense to put all the [plain vanilla] components in that particular order).
So really, you're trying to solve a business issue with technical measures.
Anybody worth his salt as a Javascript programmer should be able to recreate whatever you do pretty easily by just looking at the product itself, no code needed. It's not like you're inventing some new magical thing never seen before, you're just putting pieces together in a new way, as you admit yourself. It's just Javascript.
Even if you obfuscate the script, it'll still run as-is, competitors could just take it and run with it. A few customizations shouldn't be too hard even with obfuscated code.
In your niche business, you'll probably notice pretty quickly if somebody "stole" your script. If that happens, it's a legal issue. If your competitors want to be in the clear legally, they'll have to rewrite the script from scratch anyway, which will automatically buy you some time.
If your competitors are not technically able to copy your product without outright stealing the code, it won't make a difference whether the code is in the clear or obfuscated.
While you can go down the long, perilous road of obfuscators, you generally don't see them used on real, production applications for the simple reason that they don't really do much. You'll notice that Google apps, which is really a whole heap of proprietary and very valuable JavaScript when you get down to it, is only really minimized and not obfuscated, though the way minimizers work now, they are as good as obfuscated. You really need to know what you're doing to extract the meaning from them, but the determined ones will succeed.
The other problem is that obfuscated code must work, and if it works, people can just rip it wholesale, not understanding much of it, and use it as they see fit in that form. Sure, they can't modify it directly, but it isn't hard to layer on some patches that re-implement parts they don't like without having to get in too deep. That is simply the nature of JavaScript.
The reason Google and the like aren't suffering from a rash of cut-and-paste competitors is because the JavaScript is only part of the package. In order to have any degree of control over how and where these things are used, a large component needs to be server-based. The good news is you can leverage things like Node.js to make it fairly easy to split client and server code without having to re-implement parts in a completely different language.
What you might want to investigate is not so much obfuscating, but splitting up your application into parts that can be loaded on-demand from some kind of service, and as these parts can be highly inter-dependent and mostly non-functional without this core server, you can have a larger degree of control over when and where this library is used.
You can see elements of this in how Google is moving to a meta-library which simply serves as a loader for their other libraries. This is a step towards unifying the load calls for Google Apps, Google AdSense, Google Maps, Google Adwords and so forth.
If you wanted to be a little clever, you can be like Google Maps and add a poison pill your JavaScript libraries as they are served dynamically so that they only operate in a particular subdomain. This requires generating them on an as-needed basis, and while it can always be removed with sufficient expertise, it prevents wholesale copy-paste usage of your JavaScript files. To insert a clever call that validates document.href is not hard, and to find all these instances in an aggressively minimized file would be especially infuriating and probably not worth the effort.
Javascript obfuscation facts:
No one can offer a 100% crack free javascript obfuscation. This means that with time and knowledge every obfuscation can be "undone".
Minify != obfuscation: When you minify your objective is: reduce code size. Minified code looks completly different and its much more complex to read (hint:jsbeautifier.com). Obfucation has a completly different objective: to protect the code. The transformations used try to protect Obfuscated code from debugging and eavesdropping. Obfuscation can even produce a even bigger version of the original code which is completely contrary to the objectives of minification.
Obfuscation != encryption - This one is obvious but its common mistake people make.
Obfuscation should make debugging much much harder, its one of it objectives. So if it is done correctly you can expect to loose a lot of time trying to debug obfuscated code.That said, if it is done correctly the introduction of new errors is a rare issue and you can easily find if it is an obfuscation error by temporarily replacing the code with non obfuscated code.
Obfuscation is NOT a waste of time - Its a tool. If used correctly you can make others waste lots of time ;)
Javascript obfuscation fiction: ( I will skip this section ;) )
Answer to Q2 - Sugested obfuscation tools:
For an extensive list of javascript obfuscator: malwareguru.org. My personal choice is jscrambler.com.
Answer to Q3 - experiences of using obfuscated code
To date no new bugs introduced by obfuscation
Much better client retention. They must come to the source to get the source;)
Occasional false positives reported by some anti-virus tools. Can be tested before deploying any new code using a tool like Virustotal.com
Standard answer to obfuscation questions: Is using an obfuscator enough to secure my JavaScript code?
IMO, it's a waste of time. If the competitors can understand your code in the clear (assuming it's anything over a few thousand lines...), they should have no trouble deobfuscating it.
How can I manage those risks (being
able to debug faulty code,
ensuring/minimizing against
obfuscation errors)
Obfuscation will cause more bugs, you can manage them by spending the time to debug them. It's up to the person who wrote the obfuscation (be it you or someone else), ultimately it will just waste lots of time.
What are your experiences of using
obfuscated code in a production
environment?
Being completely bypassed by side channel attacks, replay attacks, etc.
Bugs.
Google's Closure Complier obfuscates your code after you finish writing it. That is, write your code, run it through the compiler, and publish the optimized (and obfuscated) js.
You do need to be careful if your using external js that interfaces with the lib though because it changes the names of your objects so you can't tell what is what.
Automatic full-code obfuscation is so far only available in the Closure Compiler's Advanced mode.
Code compiled with Closure Advanced mode is almost impossible to reverse-engineer, even passing through a beautifier, as the entire code base (includinhg the library) is obfuscated. It is also 25% small on average.
JavaScript code that is merely minified (YUI Compressor, Uglify etc.) is easy to reverse-engineer after passing through a beautifier.
If you use a JavaScript library, consider Dojo Toolkit which is compatible (after minor modifications) with the Closure Compiler's Advanced mode compilation.
http://dojo-toolkit.33424.n3.nabble.com/file/n2636749/Using_the_Dojo_Toolkit_with_the_Closure_Compiler.pdf?by-user=t
You could adopt an open-source business model and license your scripts with the GPL or Creative Commons BY-NC-ND or similar
While obfuscation in general is a bad thing, IMHO, with Javascript, the story is a little different. The idea is not to obfuscate the Javascript itself but to produce shorter code length (bandwidth is expensive, and that first-time users may just be pissed off waiting for your Javascript to load the first time). Initially called minification (with programs such as minify), it has evolved quite a bit and now a full compiler is available, such as YUI compiler and Google Closure Compiler. Such compiler performs static checking (which is a good thing, but only if you follow the rules of the compiler), minification (replace that long variable name with 'ab' for example), and many other optimization techniques. At the end, what you got is the best of both worlds, coding in non-compiled code, and deploying compiled (, minified, and obfuscated) code. Unfortunately, you would of course need to test it more extensively as well.
The truth is obfuscator or not, any programmer worth his salt could reproduce whatever it is you did in about as much time as it took you. If they stole what you did you could sue them. So bottom line from the business point of view is that you have, from the moment you publish, roughly the same amount of time it took you to implement your design until a competitor catches up. Period. That's all the head start you get. The rest is you innovating faster than your competitors and marketing it at least as well as they do.
Write your web site in flash, or better yet in Silverlight. This will give your company unmatched GUI, that your competitors will be salivating about. But compiled nature of flash/dotnet will not allow them easily pick into your code. It's a win/win situation for you ;)
There is a discussion about JavaScript coding in my work group. Some people argues that we should use long-name for better readability; the others believes that short-name should be favored to same bits-on-wire.
Generally, it is about coding convention. One side believes that identifier such as "fAutoAdjustWidth" is OK, while others prefer to "fAtAjtW".
So, what's the better way? Should we sacrifice readability for performance or not?
Make it readable, and if you feel that the resulting JS file is to big, use one of many JS compactors before deploying the production version, while maintaining development version with long names.
BTW. if your really worried about bandwidth, use mod_deflate.
If you're worried about bits on the wire, you could always run a minifier on your code. Then you could develop with long names, and you could release with a much smaller file that
has equivalent functionality. The Yahoo YUI Compressor looks like it does whitespace compression and token compression.
Do these same people advocate not writing comments in their code? Be entirely clear and descriptive with your variable names.
while others prefer to "fAtAjtW"
Even if "bits-on-wire" was an issue (which it's not), a naming convention like this will make the code completely unmaintainable after the first week of working on the project.
Reading the code will get to be near impossible, and when writing the code people will constantly have to think about things like "was 'fAutoAdjustWidth' abbreviated 'fAtAjtW' or was it 'fAutAtW'?". It's a huge mental tax to pay while writing code that will result in far lower productivity.
On top of that, the problem is exacerbated by the fact that in Javascript you will get a new variable for every mistyped name!
Maybe the worry isn't about bits on the wire but the overhead of reading and re/over-viewing the code.
I tend to favor short names inside function and make function names as long as necessary, but as short as possible without loosing useful meaning.
No doubt it is a trade-off. It depends on whether you want your code to resemble natural language or be more implicit and compact.
Some prefix variable names to inject context information into them. I say, if that is necessary, the IDE should provide such injection capabilities as a visual overlay on the code via context symbolics.
The next version of Visual Studio will make such annotation gymnastics much easier via a fine-grained extensibility mechanism extended deep into the editor itself. I have not used Visual Studio for editing Javascript though.
I see now that your concern is indeed the space trade-off. This should never, ever, ever be an issue. Always always always favor readability over bits on the wire, esp. since compression exists, as noted by the other commentators.
The only thing I would add is the above, which is that sometimes comprehension is made easier with compact names over excessively long names. But it is harder to get short names right. Long names are much easier and faster to make right in my experience.
The reason for short names should never be data compression only cognitive efficiency. What works is individual.
Use big variable names because they help the programmer.
To save bits over the wire, minify your Javascript before deploying it to the production server. Dean Edwards' packer has an option to compress variable names, which looks like the best of both worlds for you.
Use the long names which are just enough to well describe variables and functions.
One of the reasons you many need short names is to make the file size smaller, but you can do that by tools while uploading online.
I would strongly advise against using short identifiers. Just reading your example shows how much more documentation is suddenly needed, when names like fAtAjtW are used. At some point it will get pretty much unmaintainable and this just for saving some bytes to transfer.
If the only reason for considering "short" names is to make the resulting script smaller and thus save some bandwidth, I would instead recommend using gzip compression, which will save you way more than a few bytes for an identifier.
One side believes that identifier such as "fAutoAdjustWidth" is OK, while others prefer to "fAtAjtW".
‘fAtAjtW’ is an unreadable, untypeable horror. Seriously, anyone prefers that? Hilarious and impossible to remember — is it ‘AtAjt’, or ‘AutAdj’...?
‘autoAdjustWidth’ would be a suitable full attribute name. (I'm not convinced about the ‘f’ prefix notation at all, but that's another issue.) Sometimes you want a very short name for a short-lived variable (eg. a temporary in a small loop), in which case I'd personally go straight for ‘var aaw’ rather than the above nightmare.
As for performance, there will be no difference. JavaScript doesn't care how long you make variable names, and assuming you're deflating your scripts on the way to the browser the compression will remove any transfer advantage of the shorter names.
Whoever thinks "fAtAjtW" is preferable is using some sort of pharmacalogical method in their programnming. fAutoAdjustWidth is very fine and very prudent. Javascript libraries do not use names like fAtAjtW for a reason. If you are worried about the size then probably your worries are misplaced. However, I recommend using some sort of minifier. However, that said, don't use ridiculously long; probably anything over 25-30 chars is going a bit far.
Use smaller names where it doesn't affect readability of your code. Bigger names are fine, but try only to use them where it really does make something easier for yourself and others to follow. Lastly (and as stated in other answers) minify your code, and / or turn on some kind of server compression mechanism such as apache's mod_gzip or mod_deflate to reduce the number of bits flowing through the wires.
With that said, I would prioritise readability over compactness of variable names.
Long and descriptive names.
And try and make methods as unique as possible. This helps navigability. If you want to find all usages of a particular method, there is less likelihood that you will conflict with another method that has the same name.
Modern Javascript IDEs can also do method refactoring (see : http://blue-walrus.com/2013/08/review-javascript-ides/ ). This is very hard if methods are called the same.
I'm working on building a development tool that is written in JavaScript.
This will not be an open source project and will be sold (hopefully) as a commercial product.
I'm looking for the best way to protect my investment. Is using an obfuscator (code mangler) enough to reasonably secure the code?
Are there other alternatives that I am not aware of?
(I'm not sure if obfuscator is the right word, it's one of the apps that takes your code and makes it very unreadable.)
I'm going to tell you a secret. Once you understand it, you'll feel a lot better about the fact that Javascript obfuscation is only really useful for saving bandwidth when sending scripts over the wire.
Your source-code is not worth stealing.
I know this comes as a shock to the ego, but I can say this confidently without ever having seen a line of code you've written because outside the very few realms of development where serious magic happens, it's true of all source-code.
Say, tomorrow, someone dumped a pile of DVDs on your doorstep containing the source code for Windows Vista. What would you be able to do with it? Sure, you could compile it and give away copies, but that's just one step more effort than copying the retail version. You could painstakingly find and remove the license-checking code, but that's something some bright kid has already done to the binaries. Replace the logo and graphics, pretend you wrote it yourself and market it as "Vicrosoft Mista"? You'll get caught.
You could spend an enormous amount of time reading the code, trying to understand it and truly "stealing the intellectual property" that Microsoft invested in developing the product. But you'd be disappointed. You'd find the code was a long series of mundane decisions, made one after the other. Some would be smarter than you could think of. Some would leave you shaking your head wondering what kind of monkeys they're hiring over there. Most would just make you shrug and say "yeah, that's how you do that."
In the process you'll learn a lot about writing operating systems, but that's not going to hurt Microsoft.
Replace "Vista" with "Leopard" and the above paragraphs don't change one bit. It's not Microsoft, it's software. Half the people on this site could probably develop a Stack Overflow clone, with or without looking at the source of this site. They just haven't. The source-code of Firefox and WebKit are out there for anyone to read. Now go write your own browser from scratch. See you in a few years.
Software development is an investment of time. It's utter hubris to imagine that what you're doing is so special that nobody could clone it without looking at your source, or even that it would make their job that much easier without an actionable (and easily detectable) amount of cut and paste.
I deeply disagree with most answers above.
It's true that every software can be stolen despite of obfuscation but, at least, it makes harder to extract and reuse individual parts of the software and that is the point.
Maybe it's cheaper and less risky to use an obfuscation than leaving the code open and fighting at court after somebody stole the best parts of our software and made dangerous concurrency.
Unobfuscated code whispers:
Come on, analyze me, reuse me. Maybe you could make a better software using me.
Obfuscated code says:
Go away dude. It's cheaper to use your own ideas than trying to crack me.
You are going to be fighting a losing battle if you try to obfuscate your code in the hopes of someone not stealing it. You may stop the casual browser from getting at it, but someone dedicated would almost certainly be able to overcome any measure you use.
In the past I have seen people do several things:
Paste a lot of whitespace at the top of the page with a message telling people that the code is unavailable, when in actuality you just need to scroll down a few pages to get at it.
Running it through an encoder of some kind, this is so so useful as it can just be run through the decoder.
Another method is to reduce variable names to one character and remove whitespace (this is also an efficiency thing).
There are many other methods.
In the end, your efforts are only likely to stop the casual browser from seeing your stuff. If someone dedicated comes along then there is not much you will be able to do. You will have to live with this.
My advice would be to make a really awesome product that attracts the most people and beat off any competition by having the best product/service/community and not the most obfuscated code.
You're always faced with the fact that any user that comes to your webpage will download some working version of your Javascript source. They will have the source code. Obfuscating it may make it very difficult to be reused by someone with the intent to steal your hard work. However, in many cases someone can even reuse the obfuscated source! Or in the worst case they can unravel it by hand and eventually comprehend it.
An example of a situation like yours might be Google Maps. The Javascript source is clearly obfuscated. However, for really private/sensitive logic they push the data to the server and have the server process that information using XMLHttpRequests (AJAX). With this design you have the important parts on the server side, much more tightly controlled.
That's probably about the best you can do. Just be aware that anybody with enough dedication, can probably de-obfuscate your program. Just make sure you're comfortable with that before embarking on your project. I think the biggest problem with this would be to control who's using it on their site. If somebody goes to a site with your code on it, and likes what it does, it doesn't matter that they don't understand what the code does, or can't read it, when they can just copy the code, and use it on their own site.
A obfuscator won't help you at all if someone wants to figure out the code. The code still exists on the client machine and they can grab a copy of it and study it at their leisure.
There is simply no way to hide code written in Javascript since the source code has to be handed to the browser for execution.
If you want to hide your code, you have the following options:
1) Use an environment where compiled code (not source) is downloaded to the client, e.g. Flash or Silverlight. I'm not even sure that's foolproof, but it's certainly much better than Javascript.
2) Have a back end on the server side that does the work and a thin client that just makes requests to the server.
I'd say yes, it's enough if you also make sure than you compress the code as well using a tool like Dean Edward's Packer or similar. If you think about what is possible with tools like .NET Reflector in terms of reverse engineering compiled code / IL in .NET, you realize that there's nothing you can do to completely protect your investment.
On the other hand, remember that folks who release their source code also seem to make do quite nicely anyway - it's their experience that people want more than their intellectual property.
code obfuscator is enough for something that needs minimal protection, but I think it will definitely not enough to really protect you. if you are patient you can realy de-mangle the whole thing.. and i'm sure there are programs to do it for you.
That being said, you can't stop anyone from pirating your stuff because they'll eventually will break any kind of protection you create anyway. and it is espcially easy in scripted language where the code is not compiled.
If you are using some other language, maybe java or .NET, You can try doing things like "calling home" to verify that a license number matches a given url. Which works if you your app is some sort of online app that is going to be connected online all the time. But having access to the source, people can easily bypass that part.
In short, javascript is a poor choice for what you are doing.
A step up from what you are doing is maybe using a webservice backend to get your data. Let the webservice handle the authentication/verification process. Requires a bit of work to make sure it is bulletproof, but it might work
If this is for a website, which by its very nature puts viewing of its code one menu click away, is there really any reason to hide anything? If someone wants to steal your code they will most likely go through the effort of making even the most mangled code human readable. Look at commercial websites, they don't obfuscate their code, and no one goes out and steals code from the google apps. If you are really worried about code theft, I would argue for writing it in some other compiled language. (which does of course destroy the whole webapp thing...) Even then, you aren't totally safe, there are many de-compilers out there.
So really, there is no way to do what you want in the face of anyone with sufficient motivation.