Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Successfully protect a .net executable from being decompiled

Jun 19, 2008 10:30AM PDT

I'm looking for a way to make executable files in .net unable to be decompiled. Is there a possible way to do this? You answer is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
How long have you been around?
Jun 19, 2008 10:33AM PDT

Decompiling has been going on since, well forever. Nothing today seems to stop it from happening again.

-> Let's try this. What benefit would adding this have for me as the user of your product?

- Collapse -
Benefit
Jun 19, 2008 11:08AM PDT

This would not benefit the user, but it would protect the source code from being found.

- Collapse -
Then why not dongle it?
Jun 19, 2008 11:45AM PDT
- Collapse -
For .Net exes and dlls, obfuscation is a must.
Aug 8, 2012 8:32PM PDT

For .Net exes and dlls, obfuscation is a must. Use an advanced obfuscator like Crypto Obfuscator ( http://www.ssware.com/cryptoobfuscator/obfuscator-net.htm ) which has many settings - after obfuscating, even you will not be able to make sense of your own code if you see it in Reflector.