Adding a License to your .Net Web Application

Question

Hi, I am currently looking at adding some licensy type software which will protect my .net web application source code. Was wondering if you guys had any experience with this and knew perhaps any companies or sources which provide such utilities ?

So my main aim is to protect the actual files

i.e Default.aspx Default.aspx.cs .... being copied in the future without me being able to stop them from using it.

Thanks

EDIT : From reading the replies i seem to think obfuscator seems to be the way to go. Does a obfuscator program only work on exe or dll's or does it also work on individual pages ?

Answer 1

One step you can do is to release it as a Web Application rather than a Web Site.

Differences here from asp.net

As far as the Default.aspx, I don't know of a way to encrypt html pages that are served over standard web servers, and either way, the clients will all still be able to View Source, unless you write the entire page in JavaScript writes (horrible to manage).

Your best bet is to not include any application logic code what-so-ever in the aspx and compile your binaries using an obfusicator.

Answer 2

your web site can send to you some of the server machine information on each user login. If the mechine information is wrong, cancel the login.

Answer 3

I wondering if a simple pre-compile will do the trick in your ASP.NET application, we do that here in the company. We ship our Web modules pre-compiled and no one will see what's in the aspx code, all the "code-behind" files are translated into DLL's.

see more here

Answer 4

I was wondering if there was any other way to protect your sour code other than obfuscator or precompiling.

I.e you have a list of pages Default.aspx Default.aspx.cs web.config

Where your main aim is to prevent a 3rd party from taking your code if they have access to the source code ?

Answer 5

unless you obfuscate it in some way so it is more effort than it is worth, or you precompile I don't see how you could prevent them from just isolating the license checking code - and removing it.

You can run an obfuscator over the source code and distribute the obfuscated version, there are numerous examples of this around, particularly for javascript.

Answer 6

I wouldn't bother with obfuscation: the latest syntax-sugar, compile-time tricks and optimisations in .Net 3.5 make simple reverse engineering pretty tough already.

For instance each time you use the yield keyword it generates an enumeration class with a complex structure and an unreadable name.

Obfuscation will make it tougher to reverse engineer, but not by a enough. Either will deter the basic hack with a copy of reflector, neither will deter or stop a determined and expert cracker.

I would key-sign all your assemblies - then if they reverse one they have to reverse all.

I'd take as much of the actual application logic out of the web project and into referenced DLLs - your web project should really be all about the UI. This makes it easier to unit test the underlying logic, and easier to obfuscate if you decide that it's worth it.

Answer 7

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