Re: ASProtect
- From: "Andrew Jameson" <contact@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2005 09:38:35 +0100
Dear John,
IMHO software protection is a can of worms that you'll end up worrying about
forever ... face it, if your product's any good then it'll be hacked ... if
it's really good, you'll find your product all over crackz / serialz / warez
sites ... but the reality is that this situation will not impact your
potential sales ... in fact you might consider it to be not only flattering
but also it's actually a form of advertising !
We've launched several products without being badly hit ... then we launched
Letter Rack 3D ... a month later there was a sudden plethora of serial
numbers and keygens. We rapidly responded by using a range of commercial
protection software schemes ... all were eventually defeated ... some
through our misunderstanding of the product usage ... but none can ever be
100% effective.
If you carefully trawl through crackz sites, you will see all the 'big boys'
there ... Adobe, MicroSoft ... all broken !
Advice ? ... We brewed some of our basic protection and added CRC protection
to our files but you could look at TurboPower's OnGuard, it's free including
source :
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tponguard/
Other advice ? Trialware with usage restrictions ... avoid it if possible
as most can be easily reset using common tools like RegMon and FileMon to
determine key dependencies. Also, nearly all protected programs use it all
at start up and launch dialogs to tell the user that passwords are invalid
or that the program has been illegally modified ... these provide great
markers for disassemblers. So put some protection up front but then retest
somewhere deep in your code or use some concealed time event when it will
test the protection again.
Do some homework, look around a hackers sites (be wary of trojans, adware
and viruses) and look at techniques and tools that they use, you'll find all
the techniques to reverese engineer most of the commercial protection
schemes ... we've even contacted a few forums and got some good advice from
hackers ... but don't lose sleep over it !
Andrew
"John McTaggart" <john_at_compnet101_dot_com> wrote in message
news:4265b8de@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I'm looking for something that will keep the casual
> hackers at bay with a minimal amount of work..
>
> Anyone have experience with this product?
>
> John McTaggart
>
>
.
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