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242

answers:

4

I heard somewhere that I need to strong name my binaries before I distribute them. Any ideas what this is?

+1  A: 

If you're talking about .NET assemblies, here are the docs.

Alex Martelli
+2  A: 

Eric Lippert posted about strong signing assemblies recently.

Timothy Carter
+1  A: 

I found this MSDN magazine article useful when learning about strong naming assemblies.

Si
+3  A: 

In short strong named assemblies are signed with a certificate. They play a role for the CAS (Code Access Security): what the assembly has the right to do or not to do.

[Edit] as some of you pointed out: it is really advised to create strong assemblies as they will be more robust against attacks like introducing foreign malicious code into your application if you wrote some plug-in mechanism for example.

This way you can limit what the 3rdparty plug-ins are allowed to do in the context of your application.

jdehaan
There's a lot more : What about the GAC ? What about "assembly spoofing" ? etc...
Cédric Rup
Strong-named assemblies are NOT signed with a certificate. Strong-named assemblies are signed with a strong-name key. Certificate-signed assemblies are signed with a certificate. If you do not understand the difference, see my article linked above.
Eric Lippert
Thanks for pointing out this, this is indeed what I missed!
jdehaan