Making Trial/Registration programs - again

[DaveW]

Creating 'commercial', trial/registered versions of a B4PPC program....

I know that this is a subject that has been raised a number of times before, but as far as I can see, there have been no simple but effective solutions proposed on the forums. I would therefore like to bring up another aspect of it. I have been looking around and found a number of commercial product that are aimed at the VB, C and .NET realms of PDAs & Devices. I was wondering if it would be possible to use one of these with a B4PPC program. They all have examples of how to add the necessary code to an eVB, eVC or .NET program and obviously this would not work 'as-is' with B4PPC. But perhaps the various function calls, etc could be converted to a form that B4PPC would accept? Perhaps even a simple DLL could be used to interpret between the program and the registration system?

As is obvious from this, I have no idea really what could (or could not) be done but I would at least allow me to close off a line of inquiry if someone could categorically state it would not work!

FYI, I have been looking at the Locker system (Locker CE - Pocket PC Software Security), Eziriz (www.EZIRIZ.com) and Net Licensing (.Net Licensing Pro - Home) as possible contenders.

I look forward to your comments
David.

 

[N1c0_ds]

Creating 'commercial', trial/registered versions of a B4PPC program....

I know that this is a subject that has been raised a number of times before, but as far as I can see, there have been no simple but effective solutions proposed on the forums. I would therefore like to bring up another aspect of it. I have been looking around and found a number of commercial product that are aimed at the VB, C and .NET realms of PDAs & Devices. I was wondering if it would be possible to use one of these with a B4PPC program. They all have examples of how to add the necessary code to an eVB, eVC or .NET program and obviously this would not work 'as-is' with B4PPC. But perhaps the various function calls, etc could be converted to a form that B4PPC would accept? Perhaps even a simple DLL could be used to interpret between the program and the registration system?

As is obvious from this, I have no idea really what could (or could not) be done but I would at least allow me to close off a line of inquiry if someone could categorically state it would not work!

FYI, I have been looking at the Locker system (Locker CE - Pocket PC Software Security), Eziriz (www.EZIRIZ.com) and Net Licensing (.Net Licensing Pro - Home) as possible contenders.

I look forward to your comments
David.

I wouldn't use such a thing as the more unique systems must be much harder to crack.

Maybe mix regular expressions (Regex) and various information such as owner name and hardware info (but hardware info wouldn't allow for device upgrades)

 

[DaveW]

By 'unique' I presume you mean one you have created yourself? This is probably true, however it means I have to do all the creation work. I would rather spend my time working on the main part of the program (after all, that is what the customers are going to pay for and it needs my full attention). My feeling is that if someone has already done the work, why should I do it all again? That is why we use DLLs for image manipulation, XML file reading, etc! Though it may be possible to make a better and more unique security system, the chances are that my first attempts would be very weak and simplistic given the amount of time I would have to spend on it and the very limited knowledge I have on the subject.

 

[LineCutter]

Could something like this help?

I think that the arguments here are interesting viz. standard high complexity algorithm (with standard crack) vs. home grown low complexity algorithm (with need for one off crack, that's likely to be easier for the "real" crackers, but harder for the users of standard tools).
One approach would be to offer a demo & then cook the registration code, with it's pseudorandom access pattern, into the software as you compile it for each customer. Bypassing the checks still tells you who leaked it.

Needs lowish volumes & significant paranoia to be worth it. You sure that you wouldn't be better off with something like Erol uses?

 

[DaveW]

You sure that you wouldn't be better off with something like Erol uses?

I might be - if I knew what you meant What does Erel use? (OK, I know it's the License.txt file - but how does it work, how is it implemented?)

I am not looking for a bullet proof solution. The program is going to be fairly low volume within a very specific market and I can't see my customers expending much time and effort on hacking it. However I don't really want to have to compile individual copies for everyone - especially as tend to produce lots of revisions.

If there is a ready-made solution that can work with B4PPC then I would prefer to use that (than try to reinvent the wheel - and end up with a square one).

 

[agraham]

IWhat does Erel use? (OK, I know it's the License.txt file - but how does it work, how is it implemented?)

Have you found this thread? http://www.b4x.com/forum/share-your-creations/2504-registration-moduale.html

 

[DaveW]

Hi Andrew,

Yes I had seen that thread. In fact it was probably that that raised the question for me regarding using commercial protection systems.