Silverlight Code Obfuscation

Question

I'm looking for recommendations of any free tools available for Silverlight code obfuscation. The professional version of obfuscator supports Silverlight, but the community edition of Obfuscator does not.

Obfuscar from Google Code requires manual specification of every item that shouldn't be obfuscated, so every control and property referenced in XAML must be manually listed. There's no option to not obfuscate names of any public types and members. Even if I manually specify every public class and member, I don't know yet whether there are any other Silverlight issues lurking.

I'm not interested in starting another discussion about the wisdom of code obfuscation, or the lack thereof.

Answer 1

The following link appears to several answers that also work for this question. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/450341/silverlight-and-obfuscation

Answer 2

The version of Dotfuscator Community Edition that will ship with Visual Studio 2010 will support obfuscation of both Silverlight 2 and Silverlight 3 assemblies.

Answer 3

http://code.google.com/p/babelobfuscator/ the free and cool one for now :)

Answer 4

I haven't seen a good & free obfuscator for Silverlight so far. Here is a nice review of some cheap obfuscators: http://www.olsonsoft.com/blogs/stefanolson/post/Selecting-an-obfuscator-for-Silverlight.aspx. The author choosed .NET Reactor as favorit obfuscator.

Answer 5

Hi Geoffrey and others,

I am excited to tell you, that you no longer have to manually exclude types and members from obfuscation of Silverlight assemblies. In fact, you don't have to exclude anything at all.

CodeFort is the first obfuscator ever to introduce XAML and BAML renaming. This means that references to types and members inside of the XAML and BAML code will be updated in sync with the rest of the obfuscation - and by doing that there's no need to leave large portions of the code unprotected, as all other obfuscators do today.

If you want to take a look for yourself, go download the CodeFort Free Edition from our website: http://codefort.org/download

Hope this helps,

Christian

codefort.org

Answer 6

PreEmptive Solutions is in the final phase of beta testing the latest Dotfuscator release that extends protection beyond the Silverlight assembly and into the XAML resources too. (This kind of support is already in production for WPF/BAML). This has three benefits; more of your assembly is protected, your XAML is protected, and you save time since configuration is now much simpler (no more exclusions).

If you are interesting in being a beta candidate, email me ([email protected]) and I will have our support team send you credentials. Please keep in mind, this is beta – there are no fees – and you will have access to our support – but you cannot use this version for any production work.

The only software requirements are .NET 1.1 or higher and Silverlight 2 or higher. (Yes - test this inside Windows Mobile 7, Windows Azure, ...)

A few other things to consider:

• Analytics (feature and usage tracking) can also be injected post-compile

• The analytics also support the Expression Blend Silverlight Analytics Framework (allowing both design-time web analytics and post-compile- time instrumentation in one).

• Dotfuscator consumes XAP files rather than assemblies and re-signs them automatically making your builds that much simpler.

• Dotfuscator is also an efficient “pruner” shrinking you Silverlight apps along the way…

For more information on our “universal Silverlight support”, see our TechEd announcement at http://www.preemptive.com/news-events/press-releases/307

Answer 7

Crypto Obfuscator supports obfuscation of Silverlight assemblies. Its not free though.

Answer 8

CliSecure supports obfuscation of silverlight assemblies. It accepts xap files, processes them and outputs protected xap files.