Question

I am developing a software in C#. On user dashboard there will be some icons of our applications when a user clicks a icon the application ( exe file ) will be downloaded from our server and will be stored in user’s computer somewhere. I want to make this applications ( exe files ) only be executed from this software and not by directly accessing by file system. Is their any solution for it so that the user can only execute application through the software and not by directly accessing it?

Answer 1

No, that is completely impossible*. No matter how good your encryption is, no matter how obfuscated your program is, people will recover the keys and break it. Not to mention the fact that to execute code, the computer has to have a copy of the unencrypted code; and when there’s a copy, another copy can easily be made. Don’t bother.

_{* The closest thing you can get to it is probably implement an entire new language and run it in your VM, which is heavily obfuscated. However, as it is well-known, there is no such thing as irreversible obfuscation. Also, this would be really slow, as you could never compile it for fear of recovery of the contents from memory, and you’d have to create a new compiler, since any resemblance to native code would make it trivial to decipher.}