PureBasic Forums - English

Hello.

Latly i am working on a project.

its a cool application.

my problem is that i know that if i will charge money for it
it will be cracked and i suck in protection!

i dont want it to be cracked.

so i will go for FREE totaly FREE

but i want to implment Banners in my software,
In order to receive somthing for my hard work OR putting a DONATE
section trought PayPal (altoough i bet no one will donate)



well since i am stack in the internet since 10 years ago
i noticed no small site BANNER programs are available (pay per click)
this method is gone and thats bad for me.

i noticed a new affilated but they require 100000 hits a day and
more complicated requirements.

so i what do i do? any suggestions? do you know any cool good worthy MONEY earning programs for these such things (website banners/software banners/ afiilations... whatever)
i searched for whole day and didnt come up with somthing good.

only google ads but they dont allow it in software( i suppose i sent an email didnt got a respond yet) :roll:

so tell me from your experience i am totaly new with this
and i dont want to throw away all my hard work (almost 6 monthes)

so if you know of anything or heard or somthing
please reply , it is also usefull info for other develepors

THANK YOU!

there are ways to stop crackers... For example whenever a crack is released, update the program. A lot of users wont be able to get the old program because they are too stupid to figure that out, and then the crack doesnt work anymore.

What kind of Program is it konwing this would help finding a solution because if it's a program useful for companys you could just charge them they can't crack taht easily or if it's going to be updated very often you could do something like steam with CSS or HL2. If it's a verry cool utility you could try to get companys to sell it with their systems like M$ does with Windows
If it's just verry verry cool you could find a sponso like M$ does it with flirt Sites in MSN. As fast as PB Compiles it would be even possible to do a new version a day for example using a compiled in date within the zone which could be cracked. Don't know much about this though

I agree with thefool. Update the program but don't update the version number of the program or on your site

Good idea of not updating the version number!
So that way the newbie users who just figured out how to download a crack will be confused hehe )
besides i can help you with some simpler and more advanced protection stuff wich will keep the cracker-wannabe's away heh.

And as Nik said, let it update itself. JUST be sure not to do it too often. The crackers will just distribute the full app if it isnt very big

> Update the program but don't update the version number

Two problems with this:

(1) You can still identify an exe by its byte size and/or MD5 hash.
(2) PureBasic exes are small: they'll distribute the app+crack together.
I've even seen this approach with BIG apps on p2p networks, so a small
PureBasic exe isn't going to deter them.

Just use some form of protection instead of none -- at least that way you
will get SOME payments from honest users, rather than NONE from the
honest users, if you make the app free. It makes sense.

As PB says. Especially the some -v- none bit.

Thanks for all of your replys

TheFool: Good idea tought about it and it will be great if you could help me with the protection.

The way my application works is that a user have to register
an account (not the software) to be able to use it.
after it launched it connected the server for verfication and stuff.

the program is a very very cool util (hush hush...
i can make it totaly free with a nagger scrren for registeration

but my goal is that the registration will be as the user account name

so by registering he's registering himself to the service (1 time fee)
and can used he's registered account from any computer that have my application installed on it.

so i need to manipulate a way to make the server send an identification
that user is registered and by that load the application as registered (no nags or what so ever...)

i tought of making it free since if its good meny people will use it
and the traffic of the website will be nice, so i can use that for putting on banners on the site....

well its weird i have an application but i dont know how to recv a decent income from it!!

i am totaly confused ...

remember to add few distracting things like: name&serial, CRC of executable, encryption+packing

crc check is good(later when doing updating) way to notice that file has been touched... of course they will get around it there but later when app connects to eg. updater.php at your webserver and sends md5-hash and build number to there, updater.php should already know that is it "clean" or not by adding manually always before releasing new version build-number+md5hash pair into updater.php...
and of course md5-hash of executable is checked dynamically etc.

but best would be to have standalone updateserver so you can make negotiating with updserv more trickier and change it with every version a bit so updserv does recognize client-version just by ammount of spaces/crlf's/whatever within logging into updserv...

and dont forget to add temp-banning of ip/serial/whatever to updserver if you find them cheating... this is if you even bother making updserv/update.php i think its worth it...


my english sucks and i didnt get my ideas written just like i think about them but oh well

@pb: Actually i meant he should change something in the registration procedure.. So the md5 or filesize wont be the same!

Ah, I see.

If you have multiple applications then you can have each program also check the protection of the other...

For example: program-a could be installed (and cracked), later they download and install program-b (a different app from a different website). Both programs check the others protection in a late check (say after 10 minutes - or after a special event). If they find a problem they could mess-up the others settings or uninstall it.

The cracker will probabily not find the hidden protection because they will be looking for thing to shut down the program that is running - not another!

Make sure that the crackers don't find out that the programs are related.

also if you can make some of your functions in a dll. Then the dll can check the main app and otherwise too!

and don't include pop-up windows saying the program/registration key is invalid - hackers locate these in decompiled code pretty easily. Just close the application silently. I do this in an app, but write a text file right before close that says something nonsensical like "cannot locate user32.dll" etc. This gives no hint about your protection, but you'll know that someone has tried to hack, and it could throw off some noobs.

This is just like playing poker. The best bluffer wins. So don't show them your hand.

I use two programs - a registration program that generates a unique serial number based upon the hardware signature. The user must then contact us to get a valid registration key that will only work on that PC (matching the signature). After entering a valid reg key, the program generates an AES encrypted file with the registration key (and other random stuff). The application program also generates the PC signature then checks for the AES file to read the reg key. If no AES file, then the main app closes and launches the registration program (no popup windows), if the AES file is incorrect , the main app fails silently. The user/hacker can copy the AES file to as many PCs as they want, but it will only work on the original PC, and the app will fail silently on all other PCs, frustrating the end user and hacker.

I also use the DLL checksum technique on both my reg program and main program, so if someone tries to modify the binary by just 1 byte, they will fail silently.

I would have a checksum routine that easy to hack at the beginning - then have multiple harder to find ones later on.

Make sure you don't reveal everything about your registration key in the first version, that way you can have new protection in the next version without having to change your key method.