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1. Make sure you know about online commandline builder for VBS-Obfus
2. Prepare makefile
3. Update use of symbol names in the modules
4. Test your original code with all modifications necessary for protection applied
5. Collect names of symbols that should not be modified.
6. Test protection with "lite" protection applied

# Steps in detail

## Make sure you know about online commandline builder for VBS-Obfus

Make sure you are aware of Stunnix interactive online commandline builder. It not only helps to build command lines, but can be used as a Table Of Content for the VBS-Obfus manual.

## Prepare makefile

Prepare a Makefile for a Make utility or compose a script that will perform protection for your entire project; make sure that it allows to edit commandline options applied to all invokations of VBS-Obfus in a single place. It will be very useful since you will have to run VBS-Obfus on your entire project several times, with different settings.

## Update use of symbol names in the modules

Find all places in your code that uses symbol names to make a reference. Add the following lines to the begining of those files (or make sure that the definitions of these functions are visible to your code from some base module):

    function OBJNAME(n): n=n&"":OBJNAME=n:end function:

If the name of the symbol is a string constant, wrap it into the call of OBJNAME function (passing the name of the symbol in double quotes, without any spaces between parenthesis and quoted symbol name:

    //before
        Dim varname: varname = "myvar";
        ExecuteGlobal(varname & "= 23;");
    //after
        Dim varname: varname = OBJNAME("myvar");
        ExecuteGlobal(varname & " = 23;");

If your code uses some string that comes from external source as a name of the symbol, list all possible names of symbols as exceptions. E.g. the example below you will have to list 'f1' and 'f2' as exceptions in the 'exceptions.txt' file, otherwise your code won't work once protected since there won't be functions with names 'f1' and 'f2' (there would be functions with names something like z343a1b034 and z5e915db6).

    function f1()
        f1 = 1
    end function
    function f2
        f2 = 2
    end function

    fnnm = document.forms["form1"].myentry;
    ExecuteGlobal(fnnm & "()");

## Test your original code with all modifications necessary for protection applied

Make sure your original code, after making all modifications described in the steps above, works as the code before your modifications.

## Collect names of symbols that should not be modified.

There can be several reasons a symbol should not be replaced with a meaningless string - most frequently case is when the symbol is in external module that is shipped in non-protected form (e.g. some library you don't have permission to modify or functions defined in ActiveX control) or is a name of document element (used by your code in statement like 'document.all.para1' or formfield name used by your code like this: document.forms[1].radio_name) or used in CSS files inside expression statement, or just simply should stay the same because your project is library and the symbols are public entries into it. Another case is when some symbols are used from the parts of your application, that are not obfuscated - e.g. from html strings with embedded vbscript code that you don't plan to alter by marking names of symbols in it with OBJNAME() call.

There are several options available on how to do this:

1. For generating list of symbols from external VBScript libraries, one can use semi-manual method - extract all symbols used by your code by running VBS-Obfus over all files of your project with commandline option -D somefile.txt), and then find all symbols in 'somefile.txt' that come from external libraries.
2. For generating list of IDs and NAMEs of html elements and form fields, you can use get-idents-from-html.pl utility shipped with VBS-Obfus, by running it over all your html files, like this

       	perl get-idents-from-html.pl -i htmlidents.txt file1.html file2.html file3.html

3. For symbols that are defined in public interface of ActiveX or OLE component, it's possible to extract names of these symbols using Project Manager. Start Project Manager, go to the Tools menu and select 'Extract symbols from ActiveX components' (this menuitem is available only on Windows platforms). For each component your project uses, select the component, click 'Extract' button, and you will be prompted to save a list of exceptions extracted from the component to the file of your choice. Please note that Evaluation and Demo editions don't offer this functionality (empty file will be produced).
4. Produce list of exceptions manually. Sometimes this is necessary even for symbols from external library modules too. Just add them to the file (e.g. named 'symlist.txt') one per line.

## Test protection with "lite" protection applied

Apply "lite" protection to your application, and test as much of your app as possible (i.e. try to perform all operations, or at least most common). The 99% of the problems encountered when trying to run protected app is that some symbol from external module was not listed as exception, and got replaced with different name. Once run, you will get errors like "Object is required: z34ea8c" in places where original code calls "document.all.myentry.value" and "myentry" is not listed as exception. In order to easily identify that "z34ea8c" should stand for "myentry", one should to use "lite" protection, that will make symbols only slightly less understandable, but different from original, e.g. you will get errors like "Object is required: Z439Z_myentry", that will signal you that "myentry" is not listed as exception. The following commandline will stand for "lite" protection:

    perl vbs-obfus -jam 0 -i prefix -n none  -e 0

that will stand for "Jam spaces and newlines: off", "Number of encoding iterations applied: 0 - don't encode", "Obfuscation of symbol names: none", "Obfuscation of integer constants: none" options in interactive online commandline builder.

Once your app works correctly once such "lite" protection is applied, you should apply "final" protection, using options you wish. If such "finally-protected app" works differently, revert commandline options back to "lite" protection, and turn on each type of protection incrementally, e.g. turn on "Obfuscation of integer constants", then "Obfuscation of string constants", then "Number of encoding iterations applied: 4" and testing your app one each step.

If something still doesn't work, make sure you've read recommendations in NOTES section in VBS-Obfus manual.