.NET Assembly protection with .NET Reactor

Question

I'm testing out Eziriz .NET Reactor to protect a software, developed using Visual Studio 2010 C# WPF.

I am confused when the .NET Reactor ask to which assembly to protect. I though it supposed to protect the .msi file where user will be installing. But it asks me to upload an assembly file which is an .exe. So I upload the .exe in my bin/Debug folder which is generated by building the solution in Visual Studio.

After running the protection on .NET Reactor, I open the same .exe file with .NET Reflector, and I can still see all the classes and methods. Nothing is being protected at all.

I have read through the documentation - is it just not working or am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

.NET Reactor can only protect your .NET assemblies (.exe, .dll) but not other files like setup.msi or setup.exe.

Depending on the kind of VS project (especially deployment/setup projects) protecting the assemblies via Post-build event could be too late.

In case you want to include a VS project file output (exe/dll) into you setup you could use the .NET Reactor Visual Studio Add-in the following way:

• Open .NET Reactor and install the Visual Studio Add-in (.NET Reactor main menu item Help/Visual Studio -> Install Visual Studio 20xx Add-In).
• Open your Visual Studio project and open the Add-in (Visual Studio main menu item Tools -> .NET Reactor).
• Check "Enabled"
• Check "Project Output Is Part Of A Deployment Project (Setup, ClickOnce)"
• You can define the protection settings by defining the .NET Reactor project file or via command line switches
• In case it is a ClickOnce project add '-invalid_metadata 0' as command line parameter (to prevent deployment problems)
• Click OK and allow .NET Reactor to modify your Visual Studio project file

This way the Visual Studio project file is modified in a way to access .NET Reactor at the right time (after your assembly is compiled but still before it is added to the setup package).