Hacking .NET and LongHorn

Correct me if I am wrong.

I understand that the next OS *LONGHORN* from MS is to be based .NET a lot.

So most of the binaries will be in the Intermediate Language (IL) format, from where they can be decompiled back to the source code...correct?

So is it not an invitation for  people to crack into their OS? Is MS doing something about it?

If major products from MS are in the IL formats, wont it be easy to reverse-engineer them?

Has there been any news in this direction?

curious_guy
Monday, December 22, 2003

So far MS has been pretty cool with decompiling .NET code. They are giving more and more people access to the Windows sources also. Who knows what the future might hold?

Just me (Sir to you)
Monday, December 22, 2003

I think having the OS in machine-independent code will "commoditize" the processor so Intel won't carry the same weight any more.

Also, manufacturers will finally be able to break loose from the insane x86 architecture and just do "whatever it takes" to speed things up.

As for reverse-engineering: there are powerful obfuscation tools available that render decompiled code completely unreadable, with almost no performance penalty.

Alex
Monday, December 22, 2003

First they are criticized for being "closed-source". Now that you can decompile and see the source, it's a "problem" again! ;)))

NNL
Monday, December 22, 2003

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