SHIELD
Application Shielding for Modern Software
ByteHide Shield is the code shielding and runtime self-protection module of the ByteHide Application Runtime Defense platform. Protect your source code, your secrets, and your application against reverse engineering, tampering, and intellectual property theft. On mobile, desktop, web, and any platform you ship to.
Free to start. Used by 20,000+ developers every month. Install for any language in your build pipeline.
- Trusted by 20,000+ developers worldwide
- 4M+ lines of code protected
- 200+ companies shipping with ByteHide
- 50+ countries
- Trusted by 20,000+ developers worldwide
- 4M+ lines of code protected
- 200+ companies shipping with ByteHide
- 50+ countries
Built to protect your business, not just your code
Code protection is a business decision. Your revenue, your IP, and your reputation ride on it.
Protect your revenue and intellectual property
Your proprietary logic, your algorithms, and the software you sell are the value of your business. Reverse engineering, cracking, and cloning turn that value into someone else's product. Shield makes your applications impractical to copy, crack, or resell, so what you built stays yours.
- Protect premium features and licensing from bypass
- Keep proprietary algorithms out of competitors' hands
- Reduce piracy, cloning, and lost revenue
Protect your brand and your customers
A tampered, cloned, or breached application damages the trust you have spent years building. Shield keeps the app your users run the one you shipped, protects the data inside it, and blocks the manipulation attackers use for fraud.
- Stop fraud, repackaging, and malicious modification
- Keep secrets and user data out of attackers' reach
- Protect the reputation behind your product
Simplify security and compliance
Hardening, data protection, and anti-tamper are expected by enterprise customers, app stores, and regulations such as GDPR, PCI DSS, and SOC 2. Shield helps you meet those requirements, and the ByteHide Audit module turns your security posture into the evidence reviewers ask for.
- Meet enterprise and app store security requirements
- Support data protection and integrity controls
- Turn protection into audit-ready evidence with Audit
Protect the AI inside your app
If your application ships an on-device model, calls an AI service, or runs proprietary prompts, those assets can be extracted and reused. Shield protects the model, the keys, and the logic around it from extraction, tampering, and injection.
- Protect on-device models from extraction and theft
- Keep AI API keys and endpoints out of the binary
- Shield proprietary prompts and AI logic from tampering
Why modern applications need shielding
Every application you ship is a copy of your intellectual property in someone else's hands. Attackers decompile it to steal proprietary logic, lift algorithms, bypass licensing, extract API keys, and tamper with how it behaves. Reverse engineering tools are free, fast, and increasingly assisted by AI. This is true for anything you distribute: mobile apps, desktop software, single-page web apps, games, server-side code, and IoT firmware. Perimeter security and code scanning do not help here. They protect your infrastructure and find vulnerabilities before release. They do nothing once your application runs on a device or browser you do not control. Application shielding closes that gap: it hardens the code itself and lets the application defend itself in the field.
Reverse engineering
Proprietary logic and algorithms extracted from your binary by attackers using decompilers, often assisted by AI.
Tampering and code injection
License bypass, modified builds, cracked versions, and runtime manipulation against your users and your business.
Data and key extraction
Secrets, endpoints, and assets lifted from the code by scanning the binary or inspecting the running application.
Perimeter security and code scanning protect your infrastructure and find vulnerabilities before release. They do nothing once your application runs on a device or browser you do not control. Shielding is what defends the code in the field.
What ByteHide Shield protects
Three layers of defense, one module.
Your source code
Shield applies layered obfuscation to your compiled application so that decompiled code reveals symbols, not logic. Renaming, control flow transformation, string encryption, and code virtualization make your intellectual property impractical to reverse engineer.
Explore obfuscation in depthYour running application
Shield builds runtime self-protection into your code. Your application detects debuggers, instrumentation, hooking frameworks, tampered binaries, and compromised devices while it runs, and responds the way you configure it to.
See how Shield defends at runtimeYour secrets, resources, and embedded AI
Strings, constants, embedded resources, and configuration are encrypted at build time and decrypted only at runtime. API endpoints, license keys, and assets cannot be extracted by scanning the binary. The same protection covers the AI inside your app: on-device models, the keys to your AI APIs, and the proprietary prompts and logic around them stay protected from extraction and tampering.
Advanced obfuscation
Basic obfuscation renames a few symbols. Shield does far more. Renaming alone is trivial to reverse. Shield stacks multiple protection techniques and applies them as layers, so defeating one does not expose your code. Its polymorphic engine is AI-driven: every build produces a different protected output, so an attacker who studies one release learns nothing about the next. The protections are built to defeat automated decompilers and to hold up against AI-assisted deobfuscation.
AI-driven polymorphic
Every build is unique, so prior knowledge never carries over.
Layered, not a single pass
Breaking one technique is not enough to expose your code.
Built to resist AI
Defeats automated and AI-assisted reverse engineering.
$ ai-decompile shielded.dll
› analyzing patterns…
› reconstructing identifiers…
FAILED polymorphic output, no signal
Runtime defense
Shield defends your running application, not just your code
Complete protection covers the code on disk and the application in memory.
Obfuscation makes your code unreadable on disk. It does not stop an attacker from modifying, debugging, or dumping your application while it runs. Shield closes that gap: it builds runtime self-protection into your application, so it defends itself in the field. Code protection is complete only when it covers both, the code at rest and the application at runtime.
Anti-tamper
Verifies your application's integrity at startup and continuously as it runs. If any byte changed since Shield protected it, the application detects the change and responds before the tampered code can run.
Anti-debugging
Detects when a debugger is attached and responds immediately, closing the path attackers use to step through your code and read what obfuscation hides from static analysis.
Anti-dump
Prevents an attacker from extracting a clean copy of your application from memory, the common technique for bypassing obfuscation after the runtime loads it.
Add Runtime Protection on top of Shield
Shield already defends your application at runtime. Toggle to see how ByteHide Runtime adds real-time detection and response on top.
Take runtime security to the next level
Shield already defends your application as it runs. ByteHide Runtime takes that protection to the next level with application detection and response. Where Shield blocks tampering, debugging, and dumping, Runtime watches your application live: it detects advanced attacks like hooking and instrumentation, code-level anomalies, and compromised or jailbroken environments, then responds in real time, alerting, blocking the session, or stopping the application before damage is done. This is the difference between hardening your code and defending your application. Most code protection tools stop at the binary. ByteHide does not.
Discover ByteHide RuntimeBuilt for performance
Advanced protection that does not slow your application down. Shield applies protection at build time, after compilation, so it adds nothing to your development workflow and never touches your source. Runtime checks are native and lightweight, and protection strength is fully configurable: harden sensitive code aggressively and keep performance-critical paths fast. Your protected application behaves exactly like the original, at the speed your users expect.
Build-time, post-compile
No workflow disruption, no source changes.
Configurable strength
Protect sensitive code heavily, keep hot paths fast.
Native, low-overhead checks
Runtime protection your users never feel.
+0.4 ms — within run-to-run noise.
Integrates in minutes, not days
Protection at build time, not a rewrite. Shield protects your compiled output. There is no SDK to wire in, no source code to change, and nothing for your developers to relearn. Add it to your existing build and every release ships protected. It runs in any CI/CD pipeline and fits the workflow your team already has.
- Post-compileProtects the binary you already build, never reads your source.
- No SDK, no rewritesDrop it into your pipeline.
- Any CI/CDAutomated protection on every release.
Built for every platform you ship
Mobile, desktop, web, server, and games. If you distribute it, Shield protects it. Most code protection tools stop at mobile. Shield protects any application you put in someone else's hands, across every major language and runtime, from a single console.
- .NETDesktop, web, server, mobile (MAUI and Xamarin), and games (Unity). Any .NET assembly.
- JavaScriptBrowser, Node.js, TypeScript, every major framework, and mobile through React Native, Ionic, Cordova, and NativeScript.
- AndroidAny Java or Kotlin app. Every .apk and .jar.
- iOSAny Swift or Objective-C app. Everything compiled to .ipa.
Compatible with
- .NET
- C#
- MAUI
- Xamarin
- Unity
- JavaScript
- TypeScript
- Node.js
- React
- Angular
- Vue
- React Native
- Ionic
- Cordova
- NativeScript
- Java
- Kotlin
- Swift
- Objective-C
Mobile
Building a mobile app? Most application shielding needs are mobile, and we treat it as its own discipline: jailbreak and root detection, repackaging protection, and safe distribution through the app stores.
Explore Shield for MobileBuilt for your whole team
One module, value for every role.
For business leaders
Business leaders
Protect digital revenue, prevent fraud and intellectual property theft, and safeguard your brand and reputation.
- Protect digital revenue and recurring income
- Prevent fraud and intellectual property theft
- Safeguard your brand and customer trust
For security teams
Security teams
Continuous runtime protection across every framework you ship, with less tooling to manage and one console to see it all.
- Continuous runtime protection across every framework you ship
- One console for every platform, less tooling to manage
- Audit-ready evidence with the ByteHide Audit module
For developers
Developers
Protect your code without changing it. No SDK, no rewrites, and no performance hit. Integrity built into the build you already ship.
- Integrate security in minutes, directly into your build process
- Maintain high performance and a seamless user experience
- Protect every app, on every stack, with one effortless setup
Part of the ByteHide Application Runtime Defense platform
ByteHide is the Application Runtime Defense platform. Shield is the module that hardens your code and defends your application in production. It works alongside Runtime for detection and response, Code for finding vulnerabilities before release, Vault for secrets, and Audit for compliance.
Shield
Code shielding
The module on this page. Code obfuscation, runtime self-protection, and secret encryption for modern software.
Runtime
Application detection and response
Real-time visibility into attacks against your application, anomaly detection at the code level, and incident response.
Code
SCA · SAST
Secrets
Vault
Shield
Code shielding
ADR
Runtime
Agentic
AI agents
Logs
Audit
Shared dashboard
One platform, one account
Shield, Runtime, Code, Vault, and Audit share the same account, the same dashboard, and the same platform.
Shield is where most teams start. The platform is where they grow.
Ready to protect your applications with
ByteHide Shield
Start free in minutes, or talk to our team about your security requirements. No credit card required. Works with every major language and CI/CD platform.
