Assemblies can be opened in latest Reflector 6.0

[mitchj]

I found that assemblies protected with smartassembly can be opened with the latest Reflector 6.0. Earlier versions of Reflector used to give "invalid meta stream..." error.

Obviously, I am nervous about this. Why is this and is there any fix?
Thanks
Mitch

[Alex.Davies]

Hi Mitch,
I decided to fix reflector in this way because the invalid metadata stream trick is not a particularly strong protection. If someone else wrote a tool like reflector it would be easy for them to work around the invalid metadata stream. In that way, it was the right thing to do.

We will be focusing more on features which provide more genuine protection, by actually throwing away unnecessary information (eg obfuscation), complicating the assembly (eg control flow obfuscation), or by protecting the assembly from modification (eg references dynamic proxy).

I for one prefer to see these real protection features in action in reflector to know that the obfuscator is really doing a good job.

Hope that answers your question,
_________________
Alex
Developer,
Red Gate .NET Tools

[Alex.Davies]

We've now removed the "Incorrect Metadata" feature entirely from the latest SmartAssembly EAP build, to avoid confusion.
_________________
Alex
Developer,
Red Gate .NET Tools