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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: Malte Tancred <email@hidden>
  • Date: Tue, 18 Jun 2002 09:41:28 +0200

On tuesday, june 18, 2002, at 12:00 , Kyle Moffett wrote:
How could a cracker get past this? The government uses public-private
key cryptography for confidential material. Are you saying that somebody
could get past confidential security in a matter of days, or is my system
missing some step or something.

I believe these are two different problems. The government is not distributing programs but rather encrypted data. It's the data that's important and need to be protected, not the program used for viewing/editing the (unencrypted) data.

If you use a strong enough cryptographic algorithm you need the private to decrypt the encrypted data. It doesn't matter if you have access to the source of the program that was used to encrypt the data, or the program used to decrypt it. You _need_ the private key to decrypt the data.

When you're trying to limit a program from executing some functions according to some defined rule set, this will always end up as instructions to the processor, and if you have access to the program and the environment in which it is executed you can change those instructions, or the instructions calling them.

There's the difference I think, and that's why a hackar/cracker can always break your app as long as the binary is distributed (ie supposed to run on the user's computer).

Just a few thoughts.

Cheerio,
Malte
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 >Re: Protecting Software w/ Software License Keys... (From: Kyle Moffett <email@hidden>)

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