Re: [OT] serial number validation algorithm?
Re: [OT] serial number validation algorithm?
- Subject: Re: [OT] serial number validation algorithm?
- From: Scott Ellsworth <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2003 10:00:45 -0700
On Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 03:01 AM, Alastair J.Houghton wrote:
On Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 10:27 am, petite_abeille wrote:
On Tuesday, Oct 7, 2003, mathew wrote:
4. When presenting the registration code to the user, use a
restricted
character set.
Another thing I found useful... is to somehow incorporate, in plain
text, the name of the licensee to the SN... so instead of having an
"anonymous" SN... there is a name embedded in it... this will not
make your SN any more secure or anything... but... a licensee is more
likely to think twice before distributing a "personal" SN with its
name in it... YMMV.
The same goes for apps. in general; if you can somehow embed a
fingerprint into the application as it's downloaded, then you can tell
where a particular copy came from. Not quite as good for shareware,
but pretty good for full commercial software where copying is
prohibited, because you can easily trace the source.
This can be annoying if taken to extreme, but very effective if done
well.
An example of minor annoyance that did work out well: at WWDC this
year, the network was in awful shape, and thus it was really, really
hard to download a piece of software Apple put up at ADC. When I asked
DTS if they could download it and put it somewhere acceptable, they
were not willing; all downloads have to be individual.
Since the G5 lab had an open machine where I could download it to a
disk key, I got it fairly quickly.
This worked because I could use a machine other than the one needing
the update to get it. I did not have to install the software on an
Apple machine, run the updater, and somehow try to get it back.
So, fingerprinting can work well, as long as it does not get in the
way. It seems less obtrusive than tedious CDROM keys and stuff like
that.
Scott
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