Dotfuscator

Dotfuscator
Developer(s)Preemptive Solutions, LLC
Initial releaseApril 2002; 22 years ago (2002-04)
Stable release
6.5.4 / 7 April 2023; 19 months ago (2023-04-07)
Operating systemWindows, Linux, MacOS.
TypeCode obfuscator
LicenseProprietary software
Websitewww.preemptive.com/products/dotfuscator

Dotfuscator is a tool performing a combination of code obfuscation, optimization, shrinking, and hardening on .NET, Xamarin and Universal Windows Platform apps. Ordinarily, .NET executables can easily be reverse engineered by free tools (such as ILSpy, dotPeek and JustDecompile), potentially exposing algorithms and intellectual property (trade secrets), licensing and security mechanisms. Also, code can be run through a debugger and its data inspected. Dotfuscator can make all of these things more difficult.

Dotfuscator was developed by PreEmptive Solutions. A free version of the .NET Obfuscator, called the Dotfuscator Community Edition, is distributed as part of Microsoft's Visual Studio.[1][2][3][4][5] However, the current version is free for personal, non-commercial use only.

  1. ^ Massi, Beth (23 February 2010). "Dotfuscator Gets Better and Still Free in Visual Studio". msdn.com. Microsoft, Inc. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  2. ^ "Microsoft and PreEmptive Solutions announce enhanced version of Dotfuscator Community Edition to be included in Microsoft Visual Studio". NFV NEWS.
  3. ^ Richardson, Chris (2008). COBOL and Visual Basic on .NET: A Guide for the Reformed Mainframe Programmer. New York: Apress. p. 636. ISBN 9781430207726.
  4. ^ Johnson, Bruce (2012). Professional Visual Studio 2012. Indianapolis: John Wiley & Sons. p. 877. ISBN 9781118416488.
  5. ^ Patrick, Tim; Craig, John Clark (2006). Visual Basic 2005 Cookbook: Solutions for VB 2005 Programmers. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, Inc. p. 34. ISBN 9780596101770.