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Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...
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Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...


  • Subject: Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...
  • From: Kyle Moffett <email@hidden>
  • Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 18:42:17 -0400

On Monday, June 17, 2002, at 06:13 PM, Jason Harris wrote:
A cracker would completely ignore the whole public/private thing and find
the spot where the function that checks 'em returns YES or NO. And change
it so it always returns YES.

You could encrypt part of your code and when serialized, provide a value
that when hashed with the MAC gives the encryption key. But even then, a
hacker would take a properly serialized version, let it unencrypt the code,
and create a patch that replaces the encrypted code with the unencrypted
code.

It's just not worth the time you'd spend implementing this. Instead,
develop something that _can_ be cracked, but that will get the majority of
people to pay.

Jason Harris

I am not very familiar with how to do this. If this is possible with C code, then I
accept the validity of your argument. How would someone go about changing
the function? Would it be done on disk? How would this be affected if the code
was linked in statically vs. dynamically? Is there any way to protect against this
kind of attack? Would inlining help at all? Could the processing functions use
a macro that is compiled in, so the hacker would have to alter all of the functions?

In any case, the goal is to prevent a simple serial from working on any given system.
If a serious effort like this is required to crack it, then I'm satisfied. I would rearrange
functions and memory addresses every release anyway, just to make it more
difficult to crack.

Thanks,
Kyle Moffett
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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys...
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References: 
 >Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys... (From: Jason Harris <email@hidden>)

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