encryption - Objective-C, how to obfuscate or encrypt NSString?

Question

I have an NSString (which is a path to a file) in my code that I would like to somehow obfuscate or encrypt,

but still be able to call up the file path easily when needed. I searched for an answer to this, but everything I've seen either deals specifically with iOS or seems overly complicated.

I would simply like to use it with something such as this:

- (void)method {

NSString *obfuscate = @"/path/to/something/secret"; // encrypt or obfuscate

[self manageFiles:obfuscate]

- (void)manageFiles(NSString *)obfuscate {

    NSFileManager *files = [[NSFileManager alloc] init];

    if ([files fileExistsAtPath:obfuscate])

    ... .

— any help is appreciated, thank you.

Answer 1

(This is an old question, but I'm replying anyway)

There's no such way to in Obj-C. Obj-C is dynamic enough that any of these methods can be trapped and intercepted. Do not ship anything in a application that absolutely needs to be secret. If your application is run on a jailbroken phone, or if it is made available on piracy sites, than it has already been exposed and it's memory contents dumped. All these above methods copy the decoded data to main memory where it is exposed.

See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii-02vhsdVk

None of these methods above is actually secure. Again, do not embed these sorts of things in your applications with an assurance they are actually secure.