Re: Is there some sort of portable Copy Protection??
- From: "Andrew Jameson" <softspotsoftwareNO@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 17:56:50 -0000
Hi Sam,
I wish that there was a 100% reliable way to release software that couldn't
be copied / stolen. I have embarked on the same journey myself, looking for
practical methods to control the sale / authorization of my products but
there is no such animal ! Look around at commercial software where real
efforts have been expended to provide protection and look at the plethora of
hacker sites offering keygens / serials and cracks ... look at the big boys,
like Microsoft, Adobe, Borland and look at what's been done to break their
protection. Dealing with software theft requires big pockets to take
criminal action, so forget thoughts of demanding involvement by your local
police department ... they and no one else will really want to know.
I launched a major product some years ago ... Letter Rack 3D ... just type
into Google 'Letter Rack 3D keygen' and you can see the result of what
hackers can do. But, in a kind of perverse way, this actually caused a
dramatic leap in our sales ... it advertised our product and it is actually
quite an accolade when you realize that others considered our product worth
hacking.
It's a bit like securing your home ... yes, you lock the doors and maybe buy
intruder detection devices but I doubt that you'd hire the services of armed
guards ... software is much the same.
I've not looked around on the net for a while but there's lots of
information about basic protection schemes and hacker tools. Whatever
schemes that you choose to adopt it is essential that you understand how
they work ... I have looked at many commercial systems and some can be
broken in a couple of minutes by watching registry transactions with tools
like RegMon.
Ian gave you some good advice about displaying the registered users name and
he also suggested encrypting strings ... you took this to the ultimate of
encrypting the exe ... but remember that at some stage it's actually
decrypted in memory and again there are tools to disassemble code in memory
.... and commercial exe compressors / encryptors can very often been undone.
The name of the game is to obfuscate your protection ... remember that
telling the user that the software is registered or isn't registered
provides the hacker with an immediate area to target ... so that splash
screen that Ian suggested must be directly connected to the registration
related code and that's where the hacker will look first.
Remember that most of us and your target audience are fundamentally honest
.... if your software is good then I will want to buy it ... yes, who hasn't
ended up with a modicum of illegal software on their systems but in the end
.... sort of try before buy ... don't lose sleep over the thefts ... they're
not lost sales ... people who use illegal keygens etc. would in all
probability have never put their hands in their pockets in the first place !
So do your homework, understand your strategy and be prepared to change your
protection when your product hits the marketplace ... and be careful that
your protection schemes don't get in the way of your real customers.
(We use the strategy suggested by Ian ... we encrypt user supplied
information into our keys ... names etc.)
Andrew
.
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