Really good protection system?

[Karbon]

And if somebody goes out of their way and get a "patcher" for the program or similar,
then that "customer" allready has no intention of being a customer in the first place, and would most likely do the same regardless of what protection system is in place anyway.
And I'd prefer not to have their business anyway (trying to force people like that to be a customer would be I guess a "hostile customer"

For some people that is absolutely true. For some, however, it's not. When someone enters a pirated serial number into my software they get sent to my "naughty pirate" buy page where they get semi-educated abotu cracking being illegal, that my software isn't free and by pirating it they're making sure updates come slow (if at all). I also offer a discount for purchasing right then. You wouldn't believe the conversions I get off that page!

After buying from that page many people either call or email to explain that they had no idea it was illegal to use a serial number they found on the web (I assume some are lying about that, but probably not all!).

So if someone find a serial number with a 2 second google search for "yoursoftware serial" they might try it, even if they would otherwise buy it.

The bottom line is that you can neither spend all your time or none at all preventing piracy. It will happen, but you do need to find a good middle ground that balances the time you spend fighting crackers with the time you spend improving the product for all your paying customers. Do a little crack prevention and a lot of product improvement/marketing and you're set!

[thefool]

As karbon said; its definently not true. I can say that i used FLStudio patched for some time before i bought it, but then i liked it so much i spend about 400$ on their page

[Karbon]

BAD THEFOOL. BAD! *grin*

[thefool]

BAD THEFOOL. BAD! *grin*

Well, at least its a success story for both sides. They got my money, i got the stuff i wanted

It will happen, but you do need to find a good middle ground that balances the time you spend fighting crackers with the time you spend improving the product for all your paying customers.

This draws the bottom line. No protection is, as some people actually states, not effective at all. Some thinks that they can have no protection at all. I would say, at minimum do a little effort (money, coding, whatever) to stop the all-newbies.

[localmotion34]

The problem with "just" a serial system like that is that any amateur cracker can open your EXE in SoftICE and change the 'equal' to 'not equal' and distribute a patcher program that just circumvents all serial numbers tests all together.

So

if SerialIsValid() = True
DoSomething()
EndIf

becomes

if SerialIsValid() != True
DoSomething()
EndIf

... or something like that.

i remember DPLOT. TRSH, and like 5 others cracked DPLOT and released their crack. apply the crack, and boom, you are registered.

then work for a while in the program, and click "Save" in the menu, and WHAAAAM, redirected to their website, the EXE deletes itself, and the trial is banned from running on your computer.

all in all, there were 6 serial checks that i found by clicking various menu items that resulted in that.

read my double subclassing post. silently check your serial many times. only use PART of your serial in the "Register" dialog validation. say your serial is XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXX. only check the first block, follwed by part of the second, and part of whatever. then check the rest of it piece by piece in various events.

Case #pb_event_menu
select Eventmenu()
case #menu_copy
if checkother_partofmyserial() =0
setwindowlong_(gadgetid(#update_button, #gwl_winproc, @gotchaproc())
endif

setclipboardtext(.....)
endselect

and in the gotchprocedure()

case #bn_click
messagebox_( ...., "Access Violation at Read of Address 0X 0000FF462)

all in all, if you check your serial 15 times scattered throughout the code, it will be a nightmare for groups.

some will release what they think is a good keygen, only to find out otherwise later. some will patch the app, and then it will fail a CRC or MD5 fingerprint when the user clicks some button in an options dialog.

[thefool]

all in all, if you check your serial 15 times scattered throughout the code, it will be a nightmare for groups.

Not only do you have to call the check function, you need to use different check functions (and hardcode the check. i mean; don't simply call it..)

and have a little payload like DPLOT! Better yet, let the cracker save the file like 3 times before you fire off the website and deletes the exe.

[Derek]

have a little payload like DPLOT! Better yet, let the cracker save the file like 3 times before you fire off the website and deletes the exe.

Better still, delete their harddisk!

[thefool]

hehe
well; i guess that is a little too much. Just delete the debugger

[Derek]

I always like the idea that you let people think your program is still working ok but you make it introduce small errors or suchlike into the results.

For example spreadsheets that don't always add up correctly.

Just make the errors small to begin with and then build up so that when it is finally noticed the user might have weeks of work to go over!!

[thefool]

or else people using a cracked version will begin to say its a bad app

[Derek]

Can always bring a notice up after a few weeks or whenever telling them what your program has been doing with their data.

Kind of rubbing their noses in it!

[Konne]

Some games have very cool don't copy me stuff. The best I found was "XIII". If I was playing without a CD the game was getting slower and slower and it you were like 2 m away from a saving point u couldn't move anymore. That was cool. I guess the best thing is to make the custumer adicted to u're program and then make it unusable or u just make it like Opera. make it free to use but add comercials if the people do not pa fro it.

[gnozal]

Some games have very cool don't copy me stuff. The best I found was "XIII". If I was playing without a CD the game was getting slower and slower and it you were like 2 m away from a saving point u couldn't move anymore. That was cool. I guess the best thing is to make the custumer adicted to u're program and then make it unusable or u just make it like Opera. make it free to use but add comercials if the people do not pa fro it.

Fyi, Opera is now free (and without adds)

[techjunkie]

Try Molebox or execryptor

Wow! Molebox is cool and not too expensive - how safe is it?

[thefool]

Since it looks like you don't have any eyes im going to quote myself:

MOLEBOX: NO!!!

I have cracked several molebox "protected" exe's. AVOID it!
I have emailed the authors but they did not respond.

With a protected exe you can simple attach the debugger and when you run the program; then halt it in the debugger, you can edit the instructions like they were totally clean and unprotected. Then its just as simple as writing a little in-memory patch.. I thought to myself that it could not be true, but it is, sadly. The same with armadillo; it basically don't have any dumper protection.

Protect application from disassembling.

Yeah right; not if you let the molebox wrapper run at first. Then its all just ready for you to dump, patch, whatever.

Enough?
If not enough i have also found nummerous guides on how to extract SINGLE files from the package.