I have created a dll library and now i want to secure it and distribute it to others.
I want to provide a trial so that the user can see what it can do.
What can I do to protect it?
Thanks!
- 1Exactly what kind of protection are you looking for? Protection from rain and snow? Disassembly? Time-bomb?Mehrdad Afshari– Mehrdad Afshari2010-03-06 19:22:47 +00:00Commented Mar 6, 2010 at 19:22
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3 Answers
You can sign the assembly so that users can guarantee that it was built by you (and hasn't been tampered with), but I presume that the 'protection' you require is something other than this? Please explain further your requirements.
2 Comments
Peter Macej
Unfortunately, strong name doesn't help if you want to prevent people from using cracked version of your assembly. At first glance, it may seem that adding strong name to the assembly can protect it from tampering. But that's not true. Cracker can modify the code and remove strong name signature. And optionally add his own strong name. Just search for Remove strong name in Google.
John K
But if the end user has agreed to your signature and somebody rewraps the code, the new signature will raise a flag. So your code can be trusted even if it's not safe from tampering.
There are different ways to "secure" a library.
- Obfuscate the library, making private (well, and public, too I suppose) parts of the DLL garbled for viewers.
- If your intent is to provide time-based use, I'd suggest you add some mechanism in the DLL that makes it a) stamped with the distribution date and b) constant validation when someone calls your DLL.
Note that neither of these ways will make your public functionality "invisible". There's no way to secure DLLs in the sense of a full DRM.
Comments
There is a easy way but it has some limitations. You just add expiry date and check system time, if system date is greater than expiry date then return with error message