News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on .NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to the .NET community. Parent comment

Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by DrJokepu on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @11:05AM (#2170683)
(As a side note, it would be interesting to use Reflector to decompile Reflector itself and remove the expiration date or extend it to the far future. I know it's illegal and unethical, but it would be a fun and interesting exercise.)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by jeffesp on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @11:18AM (#2170761)
I Reflectored Reflector once and I found that the source was obfuscated. I don't think that would be a trivial task.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by MichaelGG on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @11:58AM (#2170944)
Most compiled code doesn't have debug info and internal symbols. Yet, changing something like an expiry date is often a trivial task. Obfuscation just means you'll actually have to poke around a bit instead of just searching for "isExpiryDateReached".
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by innes on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @02:19PM (#2171631)
Reflector was written by a smart guy. IIRC the obfuscation partly consists of assemblies stored as resources in the executable assembly, and loaded dynamically. But no doubt you're right - it could be disentangled.

Better and more ethical to re-write.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by nlawalker on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @11:52AM (#2170919)
Interestingly, I'm pretty sure that the original wasn't obfuscated, and Red Gate obfuscated it after they received it from the original developer.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by timrobinson on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @01:03PM (#2171266)
Reflector's always been obfuscated; Lutz Roeder had a paid-for version as well alongside the free one.

(You don't think the first thing we tried with Reflector was to reflect Reflector? :) )

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:.NET Reflector no longer a free tool - An open letter to ... by thisisfmu on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @01:41PM (#2171451)
Reflector was not always obfuscated. Old versions embedded an unobfuscated but weakly encrypted dll with the core program.
[ Parent | on HN ]