RE: Licences 101 - Copy Protection for Newbies
RE: Licences 101 - Copy Protection for Newbies
- Subject: RE: Licences 101 - Copy Protection for Newbies
- From: Peter Sichel <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:01:10 -0400
http://www.mythological.com/regcode/
Here's an interesting standard called RegCode that was invented for
Palm/PocketPC software (this is something we support here at
eSellerate). Although not directly applicable to Cocoa software, it
gives you an idea on what a "standard" registration scheme consists
of. There really is no complex hashing or anything like that
(although you can apply as many mathematical operations as you want,
including ANDs, ORs, Bitwise shifts etc). Something like this could
easily be ported to your software, although it would only generate a
unique registration code for each name (in other words, all people
named "Josh Ferguson" would have the same registration code). In
this case, you simply use the ASCII values of the letters in the
user's name, perform some mathematical operation, and make sure that
the code they entered matches the code that you've come up with.
Hope that helps out a bit.
From my perspective, this is an example of how NOT to do it.
A registration scheme like this will be quickly broken and
included in Buck's Serial Number Generator (BSNG) as mine was.
Obtaining a copy of BSNG was very illuminating. It will happily produce
serial numbers for applications from many well known publishers.
If you don't want your scheme broken quickly, use widely respected
cryptographic techniques for hashing and encryption, and be careful
not to give away the solution as part of the code you supply to
customers.
With the integrity of your keys in tact, you can then blacklist
any keys you discover being published on sites like MacSerialJunkie.com
Alternatively, some publishers have started using unlock keys that expire
(Ambrosia) or are tied to your hardware (Microsoft) to limit the damage of
such keys being published. To unlock the software on a another machine
after 30 days, you have to go back to the publisher to get a new key.
- Peter
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