I have tried Dotfuscator ,smartassembly but neither of them does obfuscate my dll correctly.
I can see the implementation by decompiling from the reflector.
Could any body suggests me a good obfuscator tool.
I will be very thankful

Two things:

- If you have so secret algorithms to hide you should consider coding them in C/C++ or even assembler to get maximum security.
- The impact of decompilaton on business is often exaggerated. The big Java companies are still in businnes (with huge success).

Either way you should not concentrate so much on obfuscation at the .NET side since you can hide your IP quite easy by creating a managed C++ assembly which codes the relevant part in C/C++. Patents and technological leadership will give much more business value than to pick this or that obfuscation tool.

Keep in mind that you will not be able to maintain your code if you cannot decipher a single call stack when your application crashes at a customer site. This increases the TCO of your software considerably. You should do it not for the whole application but only for the secret/relevant libraries.

Yours,
Alois Kraus

Thanks Feng Chen,
By saying "neither of them does obfuscate my dll correctly" I mean that When After obfuscating the assembly when I decompile them from the reflector I can see all the method names of my abstract classes.Body of My method are also easily Understandable.
All my classes names are also seen e.t.c
Can By any technique I can make my class not understandable ?

Chen I have done exactly that and found the limitations of those tools.
I have posted the question here to see what other community members are doing about obfuscating there assemblies.
There might be some good suggestion to use xyz tool for obfuscate.
That is only the reason i have posted my post here.

Two things:

- If you have so secret algorithms to hide you should consider coding them in C/C++ or even assembler to get maximum security.
- The impact of decompilaton on business is often exaggerated. The big Java companies are still in businnes (with huge success).

Either way you should not concentrate so much on obfuscation at the .NET side since you can hide your IP quite easy by creating a managed C++ assembly which codes the relevant part in C/C++. Patents and technological leadership will give much more business value than to pick this or that obfuscation tool.

Keep in mind that you will not be able to maintain your code if you cannot decipher a single call stack when your application crashes at a customer site. This increases the TCO of your software considerably. You should do it not for the whole application but only for the secret/relevant libraries.

Yours,
Alois Kraus

I use the free Dotfuscator that comes with VS 2003 and it seems to work. All class and variables are renamed and overloading is used to make it even harder to decipher (by humans). I have not tried to decompile it using the reflector though. Have you turned off renaming by accident?

kk

There is more than one way to skin a cat. And the newest way to protect your code by using encryption (the utlimate in obfuscation) can be found here...

http://alb.gibwo.com it is called Assembly Lockbox

Hi,

Microsoft just release a new suite of products (Microsoft Software Licensing and Protection Services 2008) to enable code protection for .Net assemblies as well as software licensing.

You can find more information here:

http://www.microsoft.com/slps/

The Code Protector SDK is a free download and available at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=7ae70aaa-8b7c-4e3a-af83-b71b6877705b&displaylang=en

Thanks,

Oliver Szimmetat

Lead Program Manager

Software Protection Platform

Microsoft

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

maybe it sounds too simple but to protect from the simplest way to see the source (via reflector) wouldn't it work to use a tiny selt-extractor that is not winzip compatible?