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Possible Duplicate:
How can I protect my .NET assemblies from decompilation?

I'm working on VB.NET application , and my question is : Can this application get decompiled into the source code ? if yes , how can I protect my source code from getting 'stolen' ?

Community
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user1970090
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2 Answers2

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Generally, yes, it can. You can easily use any of the many popular .NET decompilers to do so (Reflector, ILSpy etc).

In order to protect your code, you will need to use an obfuscator - dotFuscator is a popular one, though commercial ones tend to be more robust and offer better protection.

Note, however, that there is no 100% guarantee that these will work - a determined enough attacker will be able to decompile.

Oded
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There are products out there which claim to be able to 'decompile' .NET assemblies back into source (like http://www.reflector.net/). There are also ways you can try and combat this, using obfuscators. There's a nice overview here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/clrsecurity/archive/2005/05/26/422440.aspx

5uperdan
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    Claim? Did you ever try it? For most assemblies, it works fine. – Oded Jan 17 '13 at 11:27
  • Ok , But how can I protect my application from getting decompiled ? – user1970090 Jan 17 '13 at 11:28
  • I wrote 'claim' because i have no experience with using these types of products, i didn't mean for it to read derogatorily. To protect your code you would need to try and use an obfuscator. – 5uperdan Jan 17 '13 at 11:31