Securing code in WM 5.0 (Obfuscation)

G

Guest

Hi All,

I have tried out obfuscation using Dotfuscator Community Edition provided in
Visual Studio 2005. It has been a pain for me as the application that being
built is quite complex and references multiple dlls. Exceptions such as
MissingResourceException and NullRefenceException eventually reduces
obfuscation to minimal application. Is there a better way to prevent
decompilation?

I have tried to decompile using Reflector
(http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/) and IL DASM on commercial WM 5.0
applications but unsuccessful as it throws "novalid CLR header and cannot be
disassembled" or "does not contain CLI header". Any idea how this is achieved?

Thanks in advance.
 
G

Guest

I have tried out obfuscation using Dotfuscator Community Edition provided
in
Visual Studio 2005. It has been a pain for me as the application that
being
built is quite complex and references multiple dlls. Exceptions such as
MissingResourceException and NullRefenceException eventually reduces
obfuscation to minimal application. Is there a better way to prevent
decompilation?

I've used Xenocode before, but the big issue is that public interfaces
cannot have their names changed, so it's still pretty easy to figure out
what's going on inside an app, even if it's obfuscated. If you develop your
app with a layer of absttraction, so that every exposed method does nothing
but call an internal private method, then it makes it much more difficult to
read.
I have tried to decompile using Reflector
(http://www.aisto.com/roeder/dotnet/) and IL DASM on commercial WM 5.0
applications but unsuccessful as it throws "novalid CLR header and cannot
be
disassembled" or "does not contain CLI header". Any idea how this is
achieved?

Were those managed apps? Any managed assembly can be opened with ILDASM


--
Chris Tacke
OpenNETCF Consulting
Managed Code in the Embedded World
www.opennetcf.com
--
 
G

Guest

Thanks for your reply, Chris.
Yes, it is managed apps. Is that means I have no choice but to use
obfuscation technique to secure the code?
 
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