How to Automatically De-obfuscate Crashlytics Stack Traces

What is Firebase Crashlytics?

Firebase Crashlytics is a lightweight, real-time crash reporter that helps you track, prioritize, and fix stability issues that erode your app quality. Crashlytics saves you troubleshooting time by intelligently grouping crashes and highlighting the circumstances that lead up to them.

Understanding Stack Trace Obfuscation with Appdome’s Obfuscate App Logic

Before diving into the de-obfuscation process, it’s important to understand the impact of integrating Appdome’s Obfuscate App Logic with Android Crashlytics. This integration results in obfuscated stack traces that are difficult to interpret without the appropriate de-obfuscation keys, thus safeguarding your app’s internal logic by making the stack traces difficult to read without proper de-obfuscation keys. The following sections of this article will guide you through the steps to automatically de-obfuscate these stack traces, starting with a glimpse at how an obfuscated stack trace looks prior to de-obfuscation.

How to automatically Deobfuscate Android Crashlytics stack traces

Step 1: Build the feature: Obfuscate App Logic.

Figure 1: Fusion Set that will contain the Obfuscate App Logic feature
Note: Naming the Fusion Set to correspond to the protection(s) selected is for illustration purposes only (not required).

2.1.2. To add the Obfuscate App Logic feature to this Fusion Set, using the Appdome Console, follow the steps in Sections 2.2.1-2.2.2 of this article, Building the Obfuscate App Logic feature.

2.1.3. Open the Fusion Set Detail Summary by clicking the “…” symbol on the far-right corner of the Fusion Set.

2.1.4. Copy the Fusion Set ID from the Fusion Set Detail Summary (as shown below):

Step 2: Click on Workflow Summary:

Step 3: Click Download Obfuscation Mapping Files

Step 4: Locate the required files

a. com_google_firebase_crashlytics_mappingfileid.xml
b. mapping.txt

Step 5: Install Firebase CLI

Follow the instructions in this Installation Guide

Step 6: Log in to your Firebase account

Follow the instructions in the Firebase Login Guide. 

Step 7: Save your app-id from Firebase Console

Learn more about: Where can I find the App ID for my Firebase app?

Step 8: Run the following CLI command

firebase crashlytics:mappingfile:upload --app=<app-id from step 7> --resource-file=<"com_google_firebase_crashlytics_mappingfileid.xml" file location from step 4a> <"mapping.txt" file location from step 4b>

Step 9: Install the protected App
Use this command to install the APK app file to your device:

adb install <full path to APK>

Step 10: Produce a new crash to verify that the de-obfuscation is working.

From this point forward, every stack trace in Crashlytics related to this Appdome build will be automatically deobfuscated.

Related Articles:

• How to Obfuscate Java Code in Android Apps
• How to Remove Debug Information, Anti-Reversing Android & iOS Apps
• How to Optimize File Size, Code Obfuscation Best Practices in Android & iOS Apps

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