Dotfuscator 4.9.6 to Ship February 11

February 9, 2011 4597 Views Sebastian Holst

New features include:

10X performance improvement for Runtime Intelligence messaging on Silverlight and XNA apps (on and off of the phone)
Expanded XAML obfuscation further improves IP protection

For Windows Phone 7 users, perhaps the most significant new feature will be, in fact, an invisible one; V4.9.6 includes a new analytics messaging implementation that offers a 10X performance improvement on the phone with a proportionate improvement in battery life preservation thrown in. This implementation employs a multi-threaded, “batch and send” approach.

If you think your app is at all sensitive to our (or anyone else’s) analytics traffic, I would encourage you to download the new version and retest. If you haven’t downloaded Dotfuscator and Runtime Intelligence for Windows Phone yet, you can get it right now at http://www.preemptive.com/windowsphone7.html

This performance enhancement applies to any Silverlight app - not just WP7 apps. Please note: multi-threaded messaging and caching was already supported on all other .NET applications.

Also included in this release (for apps both on and off of the phone) are incremental enhancements in XAML renaming obfuscation. If you are obfuscating your XAML, Dotfuscator will now provide automatic support (meaning no manual configuration or exclusions) for the renaming of attached properties, dependency properties, routed events, and attached events. This feature applies to Silverlight (WP7 and .NET) and WPF applications.

How do you get the new version? Registered Dotfuscator users with active maintenance (all WP7 developers are automatically included) can simply open their installed version of Dotfuscator and select “Check for Updates Now” under the Help menu. The link provided will step you through a simple upgrade path.

How do you take advantage of the performance improvements? Simply run your app through Dotfuscator again; there are no configuration changes required.

How do you take advantage of the extended XAML renaming capabilities? If you have already excluded instances of these specific properties/events in an existing configuration file, then you will need to “uncheck” those exclusions. New applications will be able to take advantage of the improved XAML protection capabilities from the start. Please note: as is always the case, if there are dependencies on these events/properties that cannot be detected through static analysis, then they will always need to be excluded.

When obfuscating XAML, always check the “warnings” panel for potentially “ambiguous” XAML during the initial configuration phase (and always test your apps post-obfuscation).

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The dynamic type in C# provides flexibility that is not available in other statically-typed languages. Since its introduction in C# 4.0 (.NET 4.5), we have worked with customers who wanted to know more about how dynamic types are impacted by the obfuscation process.

Malicious actors — like any thieves — live by a simple rule: If the front door is locked, break the window.

It’s why threats like fileless malware and crypto-jacking have seen substantial gains over last few years. It’s why — despite increasing employee education and IT training — hackers are still hooking phish by developing more sophisticated and authentic-looking email spoofs. Cybercriminal communities, meanwhile, continue to grow on the dark web, allowing attackers to share info, purchase exploit kits and identify potential targets.

What does this mean for CISOs? That typical defense efforts are being outpaced as familiar attack vectors are replaced with non-traditional threats. But it’s not all bad news; here are three questions every CISO needs to ask to help close the doors, bolt the windows and leave hackers out in the cold.

Gabriel, you have been in the security industry for over 2 decades. You have seen many different tools and services. Why create a company around something as specific as obfuscation and in-app protection?

Our customers build a lot of really innovative apps that enable their users and customers to do new and cool things. These apps frequently run on untrusted client computers/devices and they control access to customer’s sensitive data or critical devices.

And after all the effort of designing, building, debugging, and deploying their applications, the last thing they want is for an attacker to steal their work or use it to look for vulnerabilities to break into their system.

Long ago, we built a Java code optimizer, but it became clear to us that our customer cared more about the obfuscation effects of the optimization than the actual performance improvement. That is when we really began to focus on app protection. First with Java, then .NET, Android, iOS, Xamarin, JavaScript, etc.

Gartner calls In-App Protection “crucial” in their July 2019 Market Guide for In-App Protection In-App Protection. The guide’s summary advises security and risk management leaders to “take due care in protecting their application clients” in order to avoid “security failure.”

This raises the question – what constitutes “due care?” Obviously, no development organization looks to recklessly expose their applications or sensitive data to attack or compromise. On the other hand, over-engineered (or poorly engineered) security controls can quickly lead to excessive development costs, performance and quality issues, and, ultimately, unacceptable user experiences. While terms and terminology may vary, there is broad consensus on how to best define “due care” for any given application/user scenario.

If you don’t follow application security closely, you might think of application obfuscation and symbol renaming as being synonymous – and with good reason. Many platforms and languages, like .NET, Java, and JavaScript have popular obfuscators that do little else--our own Dotfuscator Community Edition for .NET and ProGuard for Java are good examples. However, obfuscation is far more than symbol renaming – and in-app protection is far more than obfuscation. Much of this expansion has been driven by new security requirements, shifting attack vectors, the rise of mobile and IoT computing and, lastly, the growing recognition inside regulations and legislation of the exposure that can result from inadequately protected software.

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