1. Your Metro-style app needs protection and here is why
2. Simplest approach to protecting advertisements in your Windows 8 app
3. Preventing unauthorized modifications of XAML files in Windows 8 apps with XamlIntegRT

Here is a screenshot of app running on my tablet:

And here is the same app a couple of minutes later:

What’s happened? Where is Gears of War Ad?

As I posted before, app assemblies, non-compiled XAML and html pages are easily accessible for users. Windows 8 RTM doesn’t bring anything new for apps protection. Neither special knowledge nor tools are required to open app’s package in WindowsApps folder, find .xaml page with advertisements and remove AdControl elements. Your grandma can do it between backing a cake and knitting socks given good instruction.

Even more, I spent just ten extra minutes and created a tool that automatically scans all installed Windows 8 apps and removes all Ad controls.

How can this simple hack be avoided? Probably the easiest solution is to create AdControl in code behind:

var adControl = new AdControl 
       {
          ApplicationId = "test_client", 
          AdUnitId = "Image_300x250"
       };

adControl.SetValue(WidthProperty, 300);
adControl.SetValue(HeightProperty, 250);
            
AdGrid.Children.Add(adControl);