Registration Moduale

[scott93727]

Registration Moduale, a registration moduale for shareware, all in one sub, allows the programmer to set any expireration date, (for software use to time out), great for any shareware application made with Basic4PPC. See attached file with source and exe for normal windows (demo). Updated version added

[agraham]

Note that that this will not work on a desktop on Vista as normal apps cannot write to the Windows folder unless running as an Administrator. Don't take the following as criticism but as a pointer to not rely on simple schemes such as this if money is involved.

If you optimise compile this you can look inside the app with Reflector and see exactly what is happening making it trivial to subvert. You could partly hide things by using what is called an obfuscator but even strings like the registration filename may be visible. You could try to hide it by keeping the string in encrypted form and decrypting it on use, how visible this would be depends upon how good the obfuscator is at hiding things.

A legacy compiled app is more difficult to peer into but the filename will be visible to any hex editor and a look in the file will show the date in clear so it is not hard to guess what is happening! Decrypting the filename from a stored encrypted version before use would be more secure on a legacy compiled app than an optimised compiled app.

Protecting software is very difficult. Basic4ppc has reasonably sophisticated copy protection/licensing involving ... but having (purely out of curiousity) looked at how it works I think that I could break it if I needed to.

(I've been dying for an opportunity to use that smiley )

[Erel]

Protecting software is very difficult. Basic4ppc has reasonably sophisticated copy protection/licensing involving ... but having (purely out of curiousity) looked at how it works I think that I could break it if I needed to.

It harder than it appears
If you will send me a private email I will tell you if you are correct or not.

[agraham]

Originally Posted by Erel

If you will send me a private email I will tell you if you are correct or not.

I did and he did.

[dzt]

Well?

[agraham]

[Cableguy]

[Elrick]

I'm using an IMEI protection (by maXim ) in this way. All this "protections" protects software against newbies of course, i've already spoken with the man, who cracked my program But what about an obfuscator? I've heard (from Erel, as i remember) what progs, compiled with basic4PPC can't be obfuscated... Is it true or I confuse something? Can anyone provide a tutorial on how to do this?

[Cableguy]

bit like you, I'm planing to user Agraham's MAC address dll, and crypt one of the devices mac....
Since not all WM devices are phones, and do not have IMEi, wich, if the user, as very often do, wichs to "release" the device from the network, will almos surtenly have to change the IMEI....
MAC's are also possible to alter, but there is No "commercial" justification to it, as MOST users doesnt even know what a MAC is....

[Elrick]

MOST users doesnt even know what a MAC is....

Well, users who knows how to crack software don't need to know what MAC is, or what IMEI is, or even what stylus is They will find what you doing with MAC and then bypass it... We can protect software by using owner name, what can be simply changed, against users who just don't know how to bypass protections at all, or just don't want to know... And this is what i'm talking about - you can't make an impenetrable protection and doesn't matter which method do you using to protect your software... But we can complicate cracking as much, as possible, right? And this is why i'm interesting about obfuscator