What is the best .net obfuscator on the market right now?
I realize nothing is fool proof, but some products are obviously better than others.
+1
A:
I have had a good experience with Remotesoft products, like their Protector.
Web
2008-12-03 13:57:12
Thanks for the tip, however this is just another company which is not capable (in year 2010) of putting the download page.
macias
2010-08-27 19:58:03
macias, if you are referring to a downloadable trial version, I believe you have to email them.
Web
2010-08-27 20:57:59
Yes, I am referring to trial version, because before I buy it I would like to try it out. I noticed their requirement, but I won't send my personal info to anyone just to try out their product.
macias
2010-08-28 10:05:47
It may already have been answered, but the question you linked to was not directly related to the topic of this question.
Joel Mueller
2008-12-03 19:54:26
Did you look at the answer that vinko gave in the link I posted, and the complete list of every obsfucation question already asked?
Peter M
2008-12-03 23:57:50
+2
A:
I've looked at a few over the years and we eventually decided on spices from 9rays.net. However, after about 18 months of use we found that the product had a bug, and that we were unable to get a new version, that corrected it, without shelling out for a new, highly inflated license.
The hunt began again and we have now settled on xenocodes postbuild. It's not the cheapest, but seems to do a great job.
Martin
2008-12-03 13:59:10
Thank you for the tip. Xenocode is the most annoying software I used, it lets you download the installer, installs nicely, but when you try to obfuscate anything it asks you to send your personal data. Spices.Net on the other hand, works, but it has terrible UI and it produces code which is only lightly altered.
macias
2010-08-28 11:02:39
SmartAssembly was the least bad of the bunch I eval'd a year ago. Working out a set of obfuscation profiles is frustrating and laborious no matter which product you choose. It would nice to view your entire solution (collection of smart assembly project files) where you can turn on and off obfuscation features and test the resultant binary set immediately. Figuring which assemblies can have which options on without breaking the app. In my experience that's the most time-intensive part of the process.
xcud
2010-03-01 15:12:56
I tried it, the output was nice mess hard to decipher (pure obfuscation, no encryption), however the after obfuscating my program crashed at the start.
macias
2010-08-27 19:17:59
The webpage and the way you can get trial tell all about the company. However, I am happy if it works for their customers.
macias
2010-08-27 19:55:27
I tried to install it, it hang up during installation waiting for the license keys. Thank you for the hint anyway!
macias
2010-08-28 10:08:00
+2
A:
Crypto Obfuscator offers a good combination of advanced protection features, reliability, affordability, tool support (like MSBuild integration) and ease-of-use.
logicnp
2009-10-09 10:38:21
Crypto Obsuscator demand separate licence for each your client! It's not easy-of-use I think.
Shrike
2010-07-05 10:16:50
The code after obfusctation is a spaghetti (good), after pointing out XAML file, the output exe didn't crash, yet all my text resources are gone, i.e. program shows up with empty menus, buttons, labels, etc. Looks most promising so far (I start feeling lonely after my C++ times and simple strip which just worked without all that fuss).
macias
2010-08-27 19:48:20
+17
A:
When we were about to release our software, we evaluated more than 10 obfuscators. We have used CodeVeil, Dotfuscator, Xenocode, Deepsea, CryptoObfuscator, {smartassembly}, and a few others for our code (~20 dlls/executables).
CodeVeil and {smartassembly} simply crashed - they couldn't handle the complexity of our code. We found a serious bug in Dotfuscator, and after a month of communications they couldn't help us. Xenocode had minor problems, but wasn't the stable solution we wanted (random problems - minor though).
Conclusion: Folks, don't assume that expensive packages DO the job as they're supposed to... Just try and test as many products as you can before spending time and money.
ileon
2010-03-01 14:50:39
@m_oLogin: I thought it was obvious. We had no problems with the rest of the tools: CryptoObfuscator and Deepsea were the best tools. We finally bought CryptoObfuscator (along with their other product for licensing purposes: CryptoLicensing). We are very pleased so far, and they provide a prompt support. But as I said before, if we didn't need to buy the licensing product, we might as well go for Deepsea, which was also a great tool. We spent a month testing thoroughly the above products (plus some more I didn't mention), and so we saved a lot of money.
ileon
2010-05-26 15:48:52
+10
A:
I'm going to put in a vote for not obfuscated. Free, no hassle, and works well enough for Microsoft to use on their biggest commercial products.
280Z28
2010-03-08 22:38:15
I agree, if it's an open source project, or you are the boss in your company!
ileon
2010-05-25 10:15:26
+1
A:
We try Smartassembly, Deepsea and BitHelmet. We decided to use BitHelmet obfuscator pretty much because of the stuff you mentioned, you can easily set obfuscation options on and off and try. no problems with complex software either. Only catch, it is pretty slow, but you get used to it.
Daniel Dolz
2010-04-01 21:26:35
Thank you for the hints, for me BitHelmet was not even capable of opening my assembly (threw exception).
macias
2010-08-27 19:18:52
That's too bad. Perhaps you should contact their technical support so they can fix the product.
Daniel Dolz
2010-09-24 13:54:38
+1
A:
Try DeepSea Obfuscator (www.deepseaobfuscator.com)
Ewout Prangsma
Ewout Prangsma
2010-05-24 09:19:10
My program after obfuscation works, but when I looked into the assembly it appeared that obfuscation was very superficial -- only few "entities" was changed, the majority was intact. Btw. UI of DSO is good example of terrible usability -- radio buttons used with no grouping and with no fallback to default settings... No good sign for quality software.
macias
2010-08-27 19:29:09
A:
I've just bought Crypto Obfuscator. I think I tested all the mentioned obfuscators and only two are worth mentioning (IMHO): Smart Assembly and Crypto Obfuscator -- that is because of the quality of obfuscation. When you look at the code you will see only random mess. Other obfuscators obfuscate code in very shallow manner.
SA looks very nice, but with default settings my program after obfuscation crashed. On the other hand with CO my program was operational, only some data were not displayed. The support (user-friendliness) are on par, however CO team helped me much faster to get my program fully working, and I like how you set exception rules in CO better. Also it is a plus CO displayed warnings just after obfuscation, in SA you have to crash your program to spot the problems.
Given the fact, CO cost 20% of SA, I was happy better solution (at least for me) is more affordable.
I would like to buy Enterprise edition of CO, because it honors obfuscation tags placed in code, but except for this feature, I am OK with Basic version -- so this was my choice (+ 1 year support). Maybe some background of my projects -- only some freewares, as my hobby (I am professional developer, but it was a private purchase). The purpose of obfuscator -- to avoid reverse engineering, I would like to make my programs open source only as I see it fit.
The downsides? When I was about to pay for the product and I saw "tax" column. The cancer of our world, seriously :-(
My 2 cents, I hope it will help someone.
macias
2010-09-03 20:16:48