Obfuscating Your Application Code

The clarity and speed of writing your application in a managed .NET language (C# or Visual Basic .NET), and the ability to avoid unsafe code constructs are very appealing features of the Windows Phone platform. Unfortunately, from a security and intellectual-property perspective, managed languages have one significant drawback: they can easily be decompiled or reverse-engineered using tools such as ildasm.exe or Red Gate Reflector, potentially exposing your application source code to anybody who has access to your application's XAP file. This means that the programming logic that you may have spent days or weeks tweaking could be easily copied by your competition or eavesdropped upon for a possible attack on your application.