The best protection comes from the ability of each of those products to "link"
assemblies (even those that are part of the .Net framework) into your
executable, rather than distributing multiple assemblies. For example, see the
pre- and post-linking sample at
http://www.remotesoft.com/linker/
or the discussion at
http://thinstall.com/help/?linking_netframework.htm
Linking the framework libraries removes the need to have your users install the
exact version of the framework (including any SPs) that you've tested against.
Thinstall lets your app "use the registry" (their private copy) without
touching the user's registry.
Even if you don't want to link the framework libraries in, you can link the
protection DLL before you run your obfuscator.
One of the features of XenoSoft's product is [quote] Ability to crash ILDASM:
Prevents hackers from using the ILDASM tool, and many other tools based on
Microsoft's reflection APIs, to analyze and disassemble your code. [end quote].
See
http://www.xenocode.com/Product-Features.aspx
The Xheo solution (already mentioned by someone else) allows you to include the
source for their protection code in your app, so it gets obfuscated along with
everything else -- no external DLL, even without using one of the linkers:
http://xheo.com/xdn/documentation/default.aspx?topic=xheo.licensing%2fhtml%2fbackgrounders%2fdirectsourcecodesupport.html
If this were a football game, I'd take the Protectors over the Breakers....
At 02:37 AM 9/8/2005, Frans Bouma wrote (in part)
>> The person who started this thread should at least check out
>> the products from Thinstall, Xenocode and RemoteSoft.
>
> Have you looked at these libs? I looked into them to see if I should
> roll my own protection code or buy a license from one
>of these, though it was, sorry to say it, not very hard to track down where
>they stored the trial info for example, one of the weak
>spots in licensing. The other weak spot, which is out of their hands, is that
>calls to their lib can't be obfuscated well enough.
>
> FB
J. Merrill / Analytical Software Corp
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