Help me choose .net obfuscator program?

I have written a program in vb.net 2008 (using .net 3.5). It's a decent size program. One part of this program is to access an online database and encrypt/decrypt files. To access db I use a hardcoded password. To encrypt/decrypt files I used a hardcoded key. No matter what I do I would need to hardcode one of the two things at least. For example: even if I store database password in an encrypted file I would need to hardcode key to decrypt it. Or vice versa.

So after doing some thinking I figured that I need to obfuscate my code so that at least these hardcoded elements/values wont be visible easily. Infact to test, I used a program to disassemble my program. And to my amazement, it showed me every line of code in my program. I felt as if my entire code is pasted in my exe.

Thus I need to obfuscate my code. See I do not need too advanced settings. My program is not among the top shareware programs or super popular that I need very high security. But I need enough security so that my basic code, variables and sensitive information (password etc) is not visible.

Please help me choose a good obfuscator which will do the job. It should not be too tedious to use and should be sufficient for me. Plus it should be trusted and secure. I mean I don't want my application to crash or be unstable after I obfuscate it. 开发者_如何学Python

I have downloaded trial of .net reactor from Ezriz and it seems to be fine. What do you guys suggest? I cannot affort something over $200. So is this product worth going for. You guys know better.

Thank you for your support.

Cheers, Saurabh

Obfuscation cannot solve this problem. An attacker can change his hosts file to redirect the domain name to a database he controls. When you login he will get the username/password.

Another attack would be to use a debugger like ollydbg to obtain the username/password in memory. The username/password must be in clear text prior to use, and an attacker will be able to find it.

Security Through Obscurity will never work. You will never be able to control the client.

A better approach is to setup a a SOAP (WCF) server to abstract your database operations. The logic for building the queries must be server side. Assume that an attacker has full access to any functions you expose via SOAP.

I use Eziriz .NET Reactor for a while now and it works great for me. I used Eazfuscator before but it wasn't really powerful.

.Net Reactor has awesome features such as Anti ILDASM and Native Exe file generation. Also it'll fit your budget. You can use Trial before purchasing it and test if it works with your scenario.

You should strongly consider Babel .net obfuscator. In my opinion even though it is a console application it is by far the best for price, licensing (not locked to a single computer) and features.

I use Eazfuscator:http://www.foss.kharkov.ua/g1/projects/eazfuscator/dotnet/Default.aspx

It powerful and it's free. Wonderful tool extremely simple to use.