Accessing Private methods via reflection by ThinqLinq

At a recent Atlanta VB Study Group meeting, the topic of Reflection was presented. As part of the discussion, I mentioned that it is possible to call private methods from external classes. Unfortunately I stumbled briefly trying to demonstrate how to accomplish this. In the meeting, I attempted to modify the existing code. Below are the appropriate code snippets for demonstration purposes.

  Public Class MyClass
    Private Sub YouCantSeeMe()
      MessageBox.Show("You shouldn't be here.")
    End Sub
  End Class


  Public Class MyImplementer
    Public Sub Main()
      Dim obj As New MyClass

        'Get a reference to the type of the object we can reflect on
        Dim t As Type = GetType(MyClass)

        'Get a handle on the method in question
        'The next line doesn't work. See below for the correction
        Dim mi As MethodInfo = t.GetMethod("YouCantSeeMe", _
            BindingFlags.NonPublic + BindingFlags.Instance)

        'Call the method
        mi.Invoke(obj, Nothing)
    End Sub
  End Class

We weren't too far off. The key was we used the wrong operator to combine the binding flags. Instead of Anding (+) them, we should have ORed them. If we modify the mi instantiation line as below, we can successfully call into the private method from an external class, thereby breaking our object's encapsulation.

       Dim mi As MethodInfo = t.GetMethod("YouCantSeeMe", _
            BindingFlags.NonPublic OR BindingFlags.Instance)