I have only ever seen this kind of obfuscation with malware before. This fits unconfirmed (but credible) reports that ByteDance will not permit any non-Chinese employees to even look at the backend in their foreign offices and instead fly in experts from China. That’s not normal.
Good riddance. I hope the EU follows suit and soon. Von der Leyen has indicated that this is on the table:
https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-ban-in-eu-is-not-excluded-von-der-leyen-says/
In case people still think it’s just another social media app and that it’s only being banned, because “China bad”:
https://www.nullpt.rs/reverse-engineering-tiktok-vm-1
I have only ever seen this kind of obfuscation with malware before. This fits unconfirmed (but credible) reports that ByteDance will not permit any non-Chinese employees to even look at the backend in their foreign offices and instead fly in experts from China. That’s not normal.
I added that to my list, see also: