Protect Image Files

[pvasubabu]

Hi Friends,

Can anybody suggest me the best way for protecting image files used by vb.net application, so that they cannot be viewed / copied by any other users.

I have a folder by name "Images" which is containing all these files. Client’s requirement is that he may replace these files after installing the application and application has to use the new file. This makes it mandatory to have the file physically in the system but it should be protected in some way.

I tried encryption technique but while loading the image into control, it has to be decrypted and the file is becoming accessible while the application is running.

My requirement is to restrict users from using the image and animation files used in the application through any other means.

Please give your suggestions.

Regards
Vasu

[Edneeis]

The easiest is to use an external resource file and build in support for editing it. Of course anyone with Visual Studio would be able to easily switch pictures. A more secure, but more pain in the ass way would be to serialize the images or store all the images as one big lump of binary. To do this you would need to invent your own way to store and decode them, if normal serialization can't do it.