[xfeeefeee]

The fascinating process of reverse engineering this VM is detailed here.

TikTok uses a custom virtual machine (VM) as part of its obfuscation and security layers. This project includes tools to:

Deobfuscate webmssdk.js that has the virtual machine.

Decompile TikTok’s virtual machine instructions into readable form.

Script Inject Replace webmssdk.js with the deobfuscated VM injector.

Sign URLs Generate signed URLs which can be used to perform auth-based requests eg. Post comments.

[noduerme]

Is calling a massive embedded JS obfuscator a "VM" a bit of a stretch? Ultimately it's not translating anything to a lower-level language.

Still, I had no idea. This is really taking JS obfuscation to the next level.

One kind of wonders, what is the purpose of that level of obfuscation? The naive take is that obfuscation is usually to protect intellectual property... but this is client-side code that wouldn't give away anything about their secret sauce algorithm.

[MonkeyClub]

> Is calling a massive embedded JS obfuscator a "VM" a bit of a stretch? Ultimately it's not translating anything to a lower-level language.

From the Repo's README:

"TikTok is using a full-fledged bytecode VM, if you browse through it, it supports scopes, nested functions and exception handling. This isn't a typical VM and shows that it is definitely sophiscated."

[throwaway48476]

VM obfuscation is a common technique for malware developers.

The VM term is applied because the obfuscator creates a custom instruction set and executes custom byte code. This is generated per build.

[userbinator]

You are replying to a comment that looks extremely unhuman.

[dmitrygr]

What is the purpose of you posting a bad ChatGPT summary of the original post?

[xfeeefeee]

I quoted the synopsis from the readme thinking it would be helpful.

[pests]

It was the submission statement along with him submitting this post. It was detached as a comment and I don't think it AI.