How to save assembly to disk?

Question

How I can save assembly to file? I.e. I mean not dynamic assembly but "normal" in-memory assemblies.

Assembly[] asslist = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();
foreach (Assembly ass1 in asslist)
{
    // How to save?
}

This situation can occur when the application loads some referenced assemblies from resources. I want to save them to disk.

It is impossible to extract assemblies form resources because they are encrypted there.

That doesn't make any sense. Nor is it possible. It is of course far simpler to just read the assembly from the resource and save it with File.WriteAllBytes(). Or just not put it in a resource in the first place. — Hans Passant, Jun 24 '12 at 19:12
Why would you want to save ass[...]es to disk? That's where they were loaded from. Can't you just figure out the paths and then copy them? — stakx - no longer contributing, Jun 24 '12 at 19:18
If you want to extract assemplies from resources, use something like reshack — Jim Deville, Jun 24 '12 at 19:19
2 stackx: Because I want to analyze some functions in these assemblies. They are loading on event fmor resources using decryption. — ZedZip, Jun 24 '12 at 19:52

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 24 '12 at 19:22

0

How about trying to serialize the assembly? It is serializable.

answered Jun 24 '12 at 19:22

GregRos

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score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 11 '20 at 10:38

0

You need to find the path your assemblies came from. You can find it like this:

Assembly ass = ...;
return ass.Location;

Notice, that as is a keyword and cannot be used as an identifier. I recommend using ass.

edited Mar 11 '20 at 10:38

Daniel Hilgarth

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answered Jun 24 '12 at 19:44

usr

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I cannot find paths because tehse assemblies are encrypted and in resources. App loads them on 'resolve event'. Property 'Location' unreadable because contain unprintable characters – ZedZip Jun 25 '12 at 08:24

Mare Infinitus · Answer 3 · 2012-06-24T20:12:09.497

From the idea of Greg Ros i developed this little snippet. Please note that i tried to stick to the naming conventions.

public void SaveAllAssemblies()
{   
    Assembly[] asslist = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies();
    foreach (Assembly ass in asslist)
    {
        FileInfo fi = new FileInfo(ass.Location);

        if (!fi.Extension.Equals(".exe", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase))
        {
            var assName = fi.Name;
            var assConverter = new FormatterConverter(); 
            var assInfo = new SerializationInfo(typeof(Assembly), assConverter);
            var assContext = new StreamingContext();

            using (var assStream = new FileStream(assName, FileMode.Create))
            {
                BinaryFormatter bformatter = new BinaryFormatter();
                ass.GetObjectData(assInfo, assContext);

                bformatter.Serialize(assStream, assInfo);
                assStream.Close();
            }
        }
    }
}

But some assemblies are not marked as serializable, as for example mscorlib.dll. Hence this is probably only a partial solution?

Despite that it is possible to serialize some assemblies, I suggest using the FileInfo as provided in the example, generate a list and inspect the original assemblies.

I tried this way in my test app (exe and my assembly). I tried to serialize my assembly. The error is on bformatter.Serialize() call: [System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationException] = {"Type 'System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo' in Assembly 'mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089' is not marked as serializable."} — ZedZip, Jun 25 '12 at 08:20

How to save assembly to disk?

3 Answers3

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