Dotfuscator is a tool that hinders reverse engineering and tampering for .NET, Xamarin and Universal Windows Platform applications. It implements a combination of code obfuscation, optimization, shrinking, and hardening technologies.
A free version of the .NET Obfuscator, called the Dotfuscator Community Edition, is distributed as part of Microsoft's Visual Studio.
.NET executables can easily be reverse engineered by free tools (such as dotPeek and JustDecompile), potentially exposing algorithms and intellectual property (trade secrets), licensing and security mechanisms. Also, code can be run through a debugger and its data inspected. Using a .NET obfuscator can make all of these things more difficult.
Dotfuscator was developed by PreEmptive Solutions and a version has been free inside Microsoft's Visual Studio since 2003. However, the current version is free for personal, non-commercial use only.