Obfuscators

[Hilton]

Hi,

I was a mostly happy-Xenocode 2005-camper. Then applying a regular XP
monthly patch broke it to where it just crashed on startup. Xenocode
convinced me to pay and upgrade which I did - kinda sucks paying because
their program failed, anyway... Now it only crashes 50% of the time on
startup, and fails in many other ways such as not obfuscating big portions
of the EXE, broken control flow, etc. I have been working them on the
issues, but after emailing them with bugs (like crashes) and new feature
requests, I was told that I was clogging up their system. What? Seems like
some folks in the company are interested in fixing their product - now
called Post Build, but others aren't. Pity, nice product (even though very
buggy).

I have Preemptive's Dotfuscator, but it has problems obfuscating my EXE, not
sure why. Their support has been helpful, but I just haven't had enough
time to try debug the obfuscator. Woohoo. Also, their product runs $2000
compared with others in the hundreds. Pity they did away with their
Standard Edition which seemed to have a nice sweet-spot in price/features.

I've tried numerous other obfuscator only to be disappointed. I'm almost
frustrated enough to write a C# app to decompile the IL of an EXE, munge the
names, and recompile - with the decompile and compile steps being done with
the standard tools. Seems easy enough - I think. But I don't mind paying
and an obfuscator should 'just work'. Any suggestions (other than starting
my own company) to find a decent obfuscator that actually works?

Hilton

 

[Simon Hart [MVP]]

To be honest I've never got any obfuscators to work correctly, in fact I find
them very frustrating to work with, but i'm not too bothered. Now as I work
in consultancy writing code for clients as compared to when I used to work
for a software house, things have changed, I don't think our clients would
decompile their own code would they

See if this link helps: http://www.howtoselectguides.com/dotnet/obfuscators/

 

[Hilton]

To be honest I've never got any obfuscators to work correctly, in fact I
find
them very frustrating to work with, but i'm not too bothered. Now as I
work
in consultancy writing code for clients as compared to when I used to work
for a software house, things have changed, I don't think our clients would
decompile their own code would they

See if this link helps:
http://www.howtoselectguides.com/dotnet/obfuscators/

It is amazing how poorly they work and as you say "frustrating" to work
with. I looked through this link (thanks!) and found some useful info.
I've tried many of those obfuscators. They all pretty much suck. The
gorilla one didn't even do anything, the others haven't been touched in
years, it's pitiful. Either there is no market, or it is a huge
opportunity, or maybe somewhere in the middle.

So, do I spend hours trying to figure out why Dotfuscator fails with my app
and then pay them $2000, or do I write a simple utility to replace some
words in a text file with unique identifiers? Heck, if that works well
enough I could even start selling it!

I still wish the folks at Xenocode were more friendly, worked to improve
their product, and fixed their bugs - a lot to ask I know, but they'd end up
with a great product.

I just find it wrong to ship an EXE which allows anyone to regenerate my
code, see all my algorithms, everything. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Side story: At my last job, an engineer was assigned a complex task. During
team meetings I would continually raise a red flag saying that this task was
a job for a large team, not just one engineer. I was kinda ignored by the
manager, but I kept warning them nevertheless (in meetings and via email).
During these meetings, the engineer assigned to the task was adamant that we
needed obfuscation. OK, fair enough, but if managerment don't want it, then
no need to really push for it (sadly). Anyway... Turns out that said
engineer 'borrowed' code that just magically worked - hence his desire to
obfuscate what he had done.

Hilton