Software Registration

Mike A · Post by **Mike A** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 10:32 pm

Not that I'm ready for this yet- but I was wondering what (if any) tools people are using to enable users to register your software.

Are there any comercial or shareware tools anyone can recommend?

Mike

Post by **lowjoel** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:22 am

I would recommend you code one yourself... I did one for mine.

Davros · Post by **Davros** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 2:24 am

If by "register" you mean that a user receives a license key when he/she buys your product, then I wouldn't recommend that you code this yourself. There is potentially a life time's work here, and it is one example of where it is better to re-use rather than re-invent.

Try this one:

http://www.digitalriver.com/corporate/solutions06.shtml

Post by **upCASE** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 8:23 am

The problem is: Nothing is uncrackable. It's just a matter of time and interest in the software.

Using a commercial protection a big disadvantage: Once one knows how it works, patches can be easily applied to most of the applications that use it.
Writing your own protection scheme takes longer, but you're free to change it with each new version.

Take good care about what you do. Many "good" protection algorithms would be hard to reverse (write a proper keygen), but some of them can be easily patched. In the end, the result is the same.

Use code obfuscation if possible. Give no hints as to how the algorithm works (obvious). Avoid nag screens. Never show "I'm registered now" messages.

If you really want to "get into" that issue, read some tutorials on cracking. It's not black magic, but it might help you to know what to care about when implementing a protection.

Post by **lowjoel** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:22 am

also, if you are dealing with keys and stuff I'd recommend you not use algorithms to compute the validity of a key, rather, do live validation with a server (using HTTP or a special server protocol or something). I've never thought that using a runtime-recalculated key validity test was always sufficiently hard enough to do cracking.

But hey, by doing this you are only left with disassembly to sort

benedicte · Post by **benedicte** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:22 am

The fact is that uncrackable serial number (licence file/key) is possible, but in that case, crackers will patch the soft directly and distribute it on P2P networks.

The solution for this is to update frequently the software so that people will "need" the latest version (I am not saying that you must leave big bugs in the first versions

and fix them officially later).

Another possibility is to track the serial numbers you distribute and when you find one on the Internet, you contact the person who you gave this serial to. Then, setup some kind of "black listing" system, which will prevent many people from using the available serial.
If one of your customers deploy his/her serials, he/she will quickly stop this.
(Of course, your "Terms of Trade" should include a clause saying that distributing software/serials or patch software is strictly forbidden. Then, you're free not to supply any more newer serial numbers to those customers).

Post by **lowjoel** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:25 am

yea, that is pretty much how mine works, every time a serial is distributed, it is "tracked", and i can effectively prevent any further "activations" using that serial, and as stated in the license since this is beta i can disable the software from working on the clients computer (I can turn it off using my server... hehe) and hence like I said it is only left to be the disasm of real hacker groups that we have to deal with.

barbarello · Post by **barbarello** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:57 am

Using a commercial protection a big disadvantage: Once one knows how it works, patches can be easily applied to most of the applications that use it.
Writing your own protection scheme takes longer, but you're free to change it with each new version.

Few years ago, I played with this kind of activity...cracking commercials Softwares....Then naturaly i came to developpement, it is a normal way. Good crackers are good developpers (and I never reach the good cracker level

) because you must know many things around developpment : Hardware acces, drivers, Api, ASM, Memory access, C++, structure of exe files etc......

There are some commercials packers very expensive but really impossible to crack for the large majority of people..Armadillo for example.

You must kown that the community of crakers is not an awfull population of anarchist, they just played cracking as a game. They write their protection as challenge for other crakers.

So you can developp your own protection, go to the crackers forum, tell them to test it.

wxuser · Post by **wxuser** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:17 am

I use a prebuilt solution for windows, but a crappy one which i built for linux. I am still working hard on this one. Can any one point me to links that provide a good starting point (for Linux & MAC)?

Regarding cracking if you build your own, chances of cracking it are more. For my linux version, I gave it to my friend to test it out and he cracked it in less than an hour but he couldnt do it for the windows version.