Code Security against DISSASSEMBLING it? Protect intelectual property.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Peter
  • Start date Start date
P

Peter

Hello,
I do have a small application that I have compiled to
test.exe. When I start the ILdasm I'm able to see all my
code, forms everything. What do I need to do to protect my
intelectual property. Please help. ANY suggestion will be
highly appreciated.
 
Hey Peter,

What's happening mmmkay (a la Office Space and I do apologize for that)?
You can use the DotNet Obfuscator tool to take care of that problem. There
are also a host of third party tools that accomplish a similar task. Look
on the MSDN or on google for how to's. Hope this helps!

- Chris Willis
 
Hi Chris,
Thank you so very much for your replay.
I didn't know Dot. Net has build in Obfuscator tool!?!
How do I find it and where I can get more info about it.
Peter
 
There is an obfuscator available to users of Visual Studio 2003. It's the
Dotfuscator Community Editon which has useful but limited abilities. VS 2002
users can obtain this free obfuscator from the web-site
www.preemptive.com/dotfuscator
You can also upgrade to the all-singing-all-dancing version.

--
Bob Powell [MVP]
C#, System.Drawing

Check out the GDI+ FAQ
http://www.bobpowell.net/gdiplus_faq.htm

Buy quality Windows Forms tools
http://www.bobpowell.net/xray_tools.htm

New Tips and Tricks include creating transparent controls
and how to do double buffering.
 
As other posters have suggested you could TRY using an obfuscation tool.
However, we've just spent a few days evaluating a lot of tools... and the
results are not good reading :(

There are areas where obfuscation cannot be easily used - reflection and
remoting (which uses reflection). Anything in a .NET langauge that you need
to refer to by source name is gonna fail as the obfuscator will (obviously)
obfuscate that. So, there can be quite a lot of manpower required to
selectively obfuscate, then this leads to designing your assemblies/classes
around obfuscation limitations which (personally speaking) is silly.

If you're a company doing a 'serious' product then the free obfuscator that
comes with VS.NET2003 isn't good at all. Yeah, it does obfuscate but have
you seen how easy it is to read the code afterwards? It's too easy - way too
easy. There was only one product we could recommend - Xenocode. This
produced the most unreadable code out of all the products tested. However,
using the 'correct' decompiler (i.e. not ILDASM) you can get very very close
to the code as it was originally conceived.

Microsoft really need to address code security seriously. Maybe something
like having a security certificate system to 'view code' or to 'run code' -
rambling thoughts as I was typing!!

Best of luck anyways!
 
We offer a complete solution to protect your .NET source code from prying
eyes,

(1) salamander .NET decompiler, show how easy to get source code from the
..NET assemblies,
http://www.remotesoft.com/salamander/index.html

(2) obfuscator, make reverse engineering more difficult, the easiest to use,
support C#, VB.NET, J#, MC++, etc.
http://www.remotesoft.com/salamander/obfuscator.html

(3) protector, completely prevents disassembly (no more ildasm) and
decompilation, also offers string and resource
protection. MSIL code is replaced with x86 machine code.
http://www.remotesoft.com/salamander/protector.html

(4) native compiler, link and compile .NET executables to x86 native code,
run w/o .NET framework, coming soon.
This would be very useful for WinForms applications as the compiled code can
be deployed to more machines, and make it secure.

Huihong
Remotesoft, Inc.
 
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