Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 5

Restricting Access to Your Application

In some scenarios, you may want only certain users to be able access your application. Silverlight XAP files are easy to decompile, which may be a cause for concern if your application contains sensitive algorithms or assets. By letting anybody download your application, you are also allowing them to gain access to its contents.

As described in Chapter 1, a XAP file is simply a ZIP file with a different extension. Changing the extension to ZIP or simply opening the XAP file directly in a compression utility enables you to get access to all the assemblies and assets in your application. Then, using .NET Reflector from Red Gate Software, or a free alternative such as JustDecompile from Telerik or dotPeek from ...