Disassemble signed dll

Question

Just a thought came, many time I disassembled dlls to see the logic written, however is there any kind of security or restriction i can enforce on my dll something like creating signed dll, would it stop from getting disassembled?

No, best you can do is run it through an [obfuscator](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_obfuscators_for_.NET), but nothing can protect your source code 100%. An obfustacor makes it _harder_ to understand the logic of the source but not _impossible_. — D Stanley, Sep 17 '14 at 14:07
possible duplicate of [How to avoid .NET DLL files from being disassembled?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1825666/how-to-avoid-net-dll-files-from-being-disassembled) — Peter Lillevold, Sep 17 '14 at 18:15

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 17 '14 at 14:10

No. Signing provides some extra information - it doesn't remove any information. All it means is that a client can verify that the code was signed by the owner of the key. (For example, you may have a list of the keys from trusted organizations, and only run code that was signed with any of those keys.)

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 17 '14 at 16:45

Although not a direct answer to the question.. I do believe it is relevant, so I thought I'd add here.. One way to prevent your code from being disassembled is to not distribute it to begin with..

How do you do that.. Consider offering the functionality as a service of some kind.. If you must have the application as an application which is distributed, then it doesn't apply... but worth considering / giving a thought, if there is the code in question is high value IP.

Disassemble signed dll

2 Answers2