How can I restrict reflection for certain assemblies?

Question

In my .net application I want to restrict reflection to certain assemblies. I mean I want that my a particular assembly can be reflected by only some predefined assemblies n

Answer 1

I'm wondering what your scenario is for wanting to restrict reflection. Are you concerned about exposing some super-secret data baked into your codebase? some chunk of code that is so incredibly smart that you have some advantage with it?

The reason I ask is I just don't believe that anything that we do in software dev is so unique in itself at code library level that it requires people not looking at it--so I wonder if maybe you are going down the wrong path. Since you don't mention why you want to block reflection I don't know if maybe your scenario makes sense (at least from my POV) to restrict access.

I can't think of a real-world scenario where restricting access would really get ya anywhere--it's not the brilliance of any particular chunk of code that makes a system nowadays, it's the full package (UX, customer service, rapid evolution keeping pace with usage, etc). If your code is any good, it will change over time so that anyone 'cracking' it will be two steps behind your current iteration (at least). Your value is your brain, not the assembly.

And if you are doing it for security reasons, then you really shouldn't be attempting to 'secure' it by blocking reflection.

Again, you might have a valid reason to block reflection that I haven't thought of, but I rather doubt it's worth the effort and I would tend to believe that your energy would be better spent elsewhere... as in making that code you want to block even better.