Re: Licence and software protection

From: Nick Rollas (nickrollas_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 03/18/05 

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 14:23:16 +0200

As far as I know, Themida is completely written from scratch. Much more
faster and stable.
I also had many crashes with XProtector but Themida looks very stable. Btw,
Im using only Windows XP with SP2.
I had only a problem with a new celeron cpu (with big cache) but authors
fixed it in one day. I just replaced the SYS file (40k) and everything
worked fine, without reprotecting the application EXE.

If you read my story i told that i recommend Themida only for business
applications, for big customers, not for shareware utilities.
In a big software tha costs more than $1.000 you can easily put hardware
requirements or ask your client to change cpu to make it work. Is not a
winzip-like software of $40 that you can ask your customer to change
hardware to run.

When I have a new customer, Im asking him to run a special file (I called
CPUTEST.EXE) that is fully protected with Themida. If it runs ok it says the
customer that CPU Test passed. Otherwise it generates a report and customer
sends it back to me and I forward it to Oreans authors. They fix it and then
Im ready to release the fixed version to customer. As long as the Ring0
protection will go popular, users will give many feedbacks to authors and
protection will be stable. Dont forget that is the begging of the ring0
protection.

I work in a company and our software costs over $5.000. The software is
usually installed by our staff so for us is not a problem if software is
crashes on a target machine. The staff detects it and sends the report
immediatelly to Oreans. The fixed version is usually available within 24-72
hours. We are happy, because we know that no illegal copies are around so
far.

Nick

"Owen .K" <noemail@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:423ab73e@newsgroups.borland.com...
> Protection using Ring 0 are very unstable, I tried Themida (ex
> XtremeProtector) on many computers with different OS (Win95, WinMe, Win2k,
> XP, 2003 Server), CPU (Intel, AMD, Cyrix)... I got many random reboots or
> crash, it's was a same problem with XProtector.
>
> Sometimes work... I don't know why sometime I got a reboot of system
> ...without changing nothing... just execute :-(
> When you have this bug report from the customer, can imagine time lost to
> know where the problem come and to fix it ...
>
> Currently Themida is same than XProtector... for me is unstable ...
>
>
> "Nick Rollas" <nickrollas@hotmail.com> a écrit dans le message de
> news:423a067e@newsgroups.borland.com...
>> Since your software is running in user-mode (Ring3), any kernel-mode
> (Ring0)
>> tool can spy, debug and crack your program. Thats why everything can be
>> cracked. Most of crackers tools are running in kernel mode making
>> possible
>> to watch your protection routines in low level, study them and therefore
>> crack.
>>
>> There is a new software protector (Themida), actually the first one, that
>> runs in kernel mode (ring0), in the same level cracking tools are
>> running.
>> Its more more difficult (in some cases impossible) for cracking tools to
>> fight against the protection routines because they are running in the
>> same
>> operation level. On the other hand, when protection runs on the higher
>> operation level, it has all the privileges enabled and almost everything
> is
>> possible. For example, regural software protections such as ASProtect,
>> IonWorx, ACProtect, Armadillo, running in user mode (ring3) are unable to
>> use global-scope registry hookers to protect specific registry keys used
> by
>> protection routines. Themida, is running in kernel mode (ring0) and it is
>> able to run any system hooking or protection is necessary to prevent from
>> cracking.
>>
>> The disadvantage is that kernel mode (ring0) protection requires a device
>> driver (small one) to be installed in the user machine. Unfortunatelly,
> due
>> to the plethora of cpus and hardwares around there are some stability
>> issues. Some crashes on some old or very new machines. But, its the only
> one
>> it supports 64bit and dual xeon cpus. I can see that version by version
> the
>> product is becoming more stable and in a few months Im sure it will be
> very
>> stable. Anyway. I recommend this product only in big projects or business
>> applications. I dont recommend to use Themida in small utilities.
>>
>> You can check it at www.oreans.com. Im excited with it. Im waiting for
>> the
>> upcoming WinLicense which will support licensing. According to the
>> author,
>> it will use revolutionary technologies, never seen before on the security
>> market and it will be the first protector that will ensure a secure full
>> functional trial distribution. The old traditional security gap of
> comparing
>> BEFORE to AFTER, to detect the changes done in registry and/or files is
>> already filled. As you understand, that is only possible when running in
>> kernel mode (ring0).
>>
>> PS: For your information, there is one more software protection that runs
> in
>> ring0, but its not a regular software protector in the form ASprotect.
>> Its
>> the Starforce (www.star-force.com) that protects CDs (usually games).
>> That
>> means the everytime your application is running, the CD is required on
>> the
>> cd drive. That system puts in my mind the old days we were running
> software
>> with a special 3,5" floppy disk on the drive. At last, CD/DVD protection
>> makes the e-distrubtion impossible, because the CD/DVD media is required
> to
>> run the software.
>>
>> Nick
>>
>>
>> "Steven Yates" <duel@telkomsa.net> wrote in message
>> news:42398534@newsgroups.borland.com...
>> > Hi All
>> >
>> > Two questions:
>> >
>> > 1.) I have had a look at Turbopower's Onguard - how hard is this to
> crack
>> > for the average hacker?
>> > 2.) Can anyone reccomend near bullet proof software protection or the
> best
>> > there is ?
>> >
>> > Thanks
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>
>

Relevant Pages

  • Re: IceLicense/SecureCode
    ... I forget another detail about Themida or WinLicense is ... only one protection that doesnt store trial information in registry thats ... IceLicense is a VCL component with events etc but ExeCryptor and Themida ... programs can programmatically decrypted using special unpacker programs. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.thirdpartytools.general)
  • Re: IceLicense/SecureCode
    ... About Themida, the post done on 22-3-2006 but it was version ... one protection that doesnt store trial information in registry thats why the ... Now ICE License is not alone but most protection scheme use registry to ... programs can programmatically decrypted using special unpacker programs. ...
    (borland.public.delphi.thirdpartytools.general)
  • Re: About Oreans products (for Bob D) ?
    ... I'm just a fan of Oreans products nothing more. ... Themida is a complete protection, packing, compressing, encoding the exe ... The Virtual Machine technology is already a part of Themida and WinLicense ... Now as for the Unpacker there were some unpackers on the past but they all ...
    (borland.public.delphi.thirdpartytools.general)
  • ANN: Themida v1.0 - Software Protection
    ... Oreans Technology, is proud to announce its first software release, Themida ... Themida is an advanced windows software protection system, ... Software Protectors ...
    (borland.public.delphi.thirdpartytools.general)
  • Re: Hello PPl, is there a way of locking a design (NGC) to a particular FPGA board?
    ... > Antti Lukats wrote: ... The codes are customized to the customer. ... > The problem with using these in attempt to secure a bitstream is that the ... the actualy protection to near void. ...
    (comp.arch.fpga)