Dotfuscator 4.9.6 to Ship February 11

February 9, 2011 4271 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).

Latest NIST publication reinforces Developer Obligations (and liability)

On June 11, NIST released Mitigating the Risk of Software Vulnerabilities by Adopting a Secure Software Development Framework. While a solid piece of work in its own right, this document is noteworthy because it stands as one more proof point - in an already long list of proof points, that development processes, the developers themselves, and the organizations they belong to, ALL share some degree of responsibility (liability) for:

Untrusted Environments, Valuable Apps? Put the Protection in the App.

IT environments are evolving. Disappearing are the days of in-house, fixed-endpoint, limited access server stacks — replaced instead by a combination of private and public cloud solutions, mobile applications and IoT devices.

As noted by research firm IDC, public cloud spending now outpaces all other IT infrastructure with a growth rate topping 10 percent year-over-year, while Statista reports that users downloaded more than 178 billion apps in 2017 alone — and are on track to break 250 billion over the next few years.

What does this mean for organizations? That application environments are quickly moving beyond the purview of in-house IT, exposing both apps and network services to steadily growing risk. It creates a paradox: Companies can’t deny the benefits of third-party environments and application partnerships, but also can’t ignore the threat of app and data compromise or reverse-engineering and tampering.

In a recent developer survey, Xamarin.Android developers were 50% less likely to have included rooted device detection or anti-tamper prevention as their Java Android peers were. Yet, both sets of apps are being deployed through the same marketplaces onto the same devices and are governed by the same regulations (PCI, GDPR, HIPAA to name just a few that expect these kinds of controls).

Why are more Xamarin.Android apps going unprotected?

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Sebastian Holst, PreEmptive’s Chief Strategy Officer, to talk about his most recent trip to Capitol Hill where the topic of the day was copyright protection for small businesses – and for development shops in particular.

The life of a security architect is rarely simple. Assessing, defending and improving corporate networks requires thorough knowledge of industry best practices designed to secure critical data, combined with real-world understanding of hacker tricks and tactics meant to undermine this purpose.

As noted by the InfoSec Institute, this is an in-demand job that often comes with high expectations, odd hours and the need for constant professional evolution to stay ahead of cybercriminal threats. Complicating matters is the breakneck pace of technological advancement. The rapid rise of cloud deployments, mobile applications and IoT devices can make even best-laid security strategies seem like flies in amber — hopelessly out-of-date and effectively immobile.

Here’s a look at what’s really bugging security architects — and how they can break the mold of static security to combat emerging threats.

Dotfuscator 4.9.6 to Ship February 11

Latest NIST publication reinforces Developer Obligations (and liability)

Put the Protection in the App

Untrusted Environments, Valuable Apps? Put the Protection in the App.

Are Xamarin.Android app users at risk?

Changes are coming for US Copyright – Should Developers Even Care?

Fly in Amber: What’s Bugging Infosec Architects?

Latest Blog Posts

Latest NIST publication reinforces Developer Obligations (and liability)

Put the Protection in the App

Are Xamarin.Android app users at risk?

Changes are coming for US Copyright – Should Developers Even Care?

Fly in Amber: What’s Bugging Infosec Architects?

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