PreEmptive is dedicated to protecting your apps, wherever and however they are built. Our recent release of the Dotfuscator 6.0 beta adds cross-platform support, allowing you to protect your application on other platforms besides Windows. This allows for intuitive integration into Xamarin.iOS projects on macOS.

In this blog post, we'll go through the steps required to bring this functionality to your existing Azure DevOps Pipelines and AppCenter builds.

The DashO 10.2 release introduces a major new feature: Resource Encryption for Android. It's currently in beta, but is fully supported for production use. It allows you to encrypt the resources embedded in your APK, better protecting your Android application against static attacks.

This functionality integrates directly with your existing Gradle build, encrypting the resources during the standard build process. DashO then injects code into your protected application that will decrypt those resources at runtime.

Resource Encryption is off by default, but can be easily enabled in the DashO UI. The UI makes it easy to enable, or disable, the encryption of specific resources via drag and drop. It currently supports encrypting both assets and raw resources.

Once you install DashO 10.2, using this feature is easy.

Today we're announcing the first new major-version release of Dotfuscator in thirteen years: Dotfuscator Professional 6.0 Beta. It's an exciting new release with major new capabilities, but before we get into that, let's take a look at why it's been so long since we had a major release and why we're choosing to do one now.

For development teams, adding Dotfuscator to a build pipeline can often seem like a challenge; the value it adds is mostly gained by the surrounding business, and the cost of adding it is mostly borne by the development team. We understand that constraint, which is why we focus on making Dotfuscator as easy to integrate and maintain as possible. If you're a long-time user of Dotfuscator, you've probably experienced that - release after release of painless upgrades. That's our "first do no harm" philosophy in action.

We are proud to announce that JSDefender is now out of preview and available as the latest member of the PreEmptive Protection family.

JSDefender protects JavaScript code from hackers, reverse engineers, and other malicious actors. It accomplishes this with advanced JavaScript obfuscation transforms, runtime check injections that help ensure the integrity of your code as it runs, and all the classic JavaScript minification techniques. You can read more about its capabilities on the JSDefender features page, and in the JSDefender user guide.

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. 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.