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Protecting code when distributing demo programs

_DD
Is there any practical way to protect .NET demo programs from being
reverse-engineered? This will be for a one-shot thing, and I'm far
from making any money on this, so I'd prefer an economical solution if
that's available.

I'm thinking a combination of code 'obfuscation' and maybe a timeout,
but I don't know what is available for either. I'm open to other
suggestions in addition to those.
Jun 27 '08 #1
2 1162
On Apr 24, 6:14*am, _DD <_...@nospam.co mwrote:
Is there any practical way to protect .NET demo programs from being
reverse-engineered? *This will be for a one-shot thing, and I'm far
from making any money on this, so I'd prefer an economical solution if
that's available.

I'm thinking a combination of code 'obfuscation' and maybe a timeout,
but I don't know what is available for either. I'm open to other
suggestions in addition to those.
obfuscation is your best bet. But if you have no commercial license
you will have to use the community version provided in the IDE
Jun 27 '08 #2
On Thu, 24 Apr 2008 03:14:26 -0700, _DD <_D*@nospam.com wrote:
Is there any practical way to protect .NET demo programs from being
reverse-engineered?
With what kind of reliability?

In general, the answer is "no". The basic issue is that the more value
you put on not having the code reverse-engineered, the more value someone
else will put on actually doing so. Since it is literally impossible to
protect your code from reverse-engineering unless you simply don't provide
access to it, it's a losing battle on your part.

You can use obfuscators, and these will provide a small margin of
protection against the casual inspector. But beyond that, you'll never be
able to justify a cost for any attempt to block reverse-engineering that
is high enough to protect against a sufficiently motivated hacker.

If you don't want people to see your code, don't give it to them.

Pete
Jun 27 '08 #3

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