How would I secure my program from Hex editors?

Ive been around the hacking block where I see people able to pull out email passwords and ftp details out of programs and I was wondering whats the best bet to protect those details while not crypting my vb.net pr开发者_运维技巧ogram.

Encryption is the only way to really stop the dedicated hacker. But if this is about passwords that the program needs to know itself for operation, then it will have to have the key embedded as well (or maybe download it from your server every time). So the dedicated hacker could still get to it. Same problem the content industry faces in their Digital Restriction Management efforts : the player needs to be able to decode the media, they need to give people the player, so the player can be disassembled, and the encryption cracked.

All you can do is obfuscate things a little (or a lot).

Or give up on client software and run your program as a web service, where people cannot get to the code.

Obfuscation and encryption may delay a crack, but only for a while, because every encryption system can be broken with:

1. Access.
2. Enough time.

Because an exact digital copy of whatever can be made in minutes or seconds, time is guaranteed, so #1 becomes paramount.

Never store passwords in software or databases!. Take a look at the SO Q&A about Salting Passwords for the details.