With the introduction of netcoreapp3.X and .NET5.0, the publication of executable programs as single-file executables (SFE) is enabled in the context of single file deployment.
In the publish step, all compiled assemblies and the necessary .NET components are packed to a metafile including bootloader. At runtime, this metafile is extracted to a temporary directory or in memory and executed. Subsequent extraction of this SFE, modification of the executable file and repackaging into an SFE are not possible.
Thus, the integration of the protection by AxProtector .NET must be ensured beforehand in the build process.
This section shows how AxProtectorNet can be integrated into the dotnet/VisualStudio build flow in such a way that application release enables encryption of the executable and thus the creation of single-file executables.