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I have read many posts about decompiling (though no experience) but did not understand why all of them generally mentioned that it is easier to decompile C# than C++ executable. Could anyone explain the difference?
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You can decompile the binary. That won't give you your source code, but it'll give you some source code with the same behavior. You won't get the variable names unless it was a debug binary. You won't get the exact same logic unless you compiled without optimizations.
It is also not possible to decompile all programs. Furthermore, it is not easy to separate data and code because both are represented similarly in most current computer systems. A type of reverse engineering, a decompiler performs the opposite operations of a compiler.
Higher-level reverse engineering such as decompilation is illegal as it is a threat to the ideas and intellectual property of the software creators via recreating the source code, which is the protected element.
It is widely recognized that state-of-the-art decompilers usually cannot fully decompile binaries that were compiled with optimizations. As an example, consider an expression such as array[index - c], where c is a numeric constant. A concrete example is shown in the code snippet below.
C# compiles into CIL, not directly into a native code like a C++ compiler would normally do.
It produces a .NET assembly, which contains much more meta data than a C++ executable does (via the embedded manifest) - this is metadata about the types contained in the assembly, what it references and more, making it much easier to decompile than a "normal" executable.
As noted in the comments, CIL in and of itself is a higher level language than assembly and is an object oriented language, making it easier to understand and decompile correctly.
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