Problem:
Method to protect applications against the numerous .NET decompilers on the market?
Resolution:
Decompilers are not a new technology. It is perfectly possible to decompile current Win32 based applications or applications on other platforms. This is a problem for all languages. its not just an issue in the COBOL world.
It is possible to decompile a COBOL program but that module would still need the COBOL runtime , File Handler , SQL , XML supporting assemblies.
Even by decompiling you would still end up with very unreadable and unmaintainable code that still needs a Micro Focus runtime.
In terms of security, there are a number of possible avenues to explore:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/programming/tools/
Under "Obfuscators" there are links to a variety of products that will help secure your code. These type of products can be used to make all but the simplest Hello World type application unintelligible.
If, on the other hand the code is deemed too sensitive to put on untrusted machines then perhaps consideration could be given to exposing the functionality via Web Services (or some other server technology such as remoting) that way the assemblies remain on a controlled server.
Micro Focus would also recommend strong naming assemblies as that puts hash codes in the assemblies that stops any tampering with assemblies using any Hex Editors.
