How can one protect the piracy of his software?

fikre

[b][red]This message was edited by fikre at 2002-10-23 22:58:49[/red][/b][hr]
[b][red]This message was edited by fikre at 2002-10-23 22:54:14[/red][/b][hr]
how do i make my software, which i built using visual basic,and which i am going to distribute in a CD, non-copyable. What saftey precautions can i take to protect the piracy of my software.
thanks

j322223

use Drive.SerialNumber property to get a unique serial number of c: hard drive. you can use it as site number which identifies the user of your program: the user will e-mail this number to you and you will send him back the license code based on this number (for example Drive.SerialNumber*25), which will unlock your program. just scramble the license code with a couple of math operation so nobody will be able to reproduce it ( x*25 is not a good example).
i guess hardware based licenses is the only way to protect your program from illegal copying (until it falls into the hands of some good cracker, of course)

RahulSingi

Hello sir i am using your way to protect piracy of software but in this way how can i give check in the software because when i develope the project i dont have the serial no. of the customers hard drive.

Kresha7

You could make a kind of KeyGenerate with you send the costumers and ask them to send the key back to you.
and like above said try to scramble the key add characters/numbers to it so if someone would debug your application with example OllyDBG
He could find eaily the hardware key and replace it with his own so if you add characters and make some math calculations with the hardware key its harder to find it u could also use some kind of protectors or Packer to make it harder for a cracker to crack your applications.
Sorry for my bad english

RahulSingi

Hello Sir
This way is good and I am using this.
Its a good way to generate the key but there i am facing a problem.
In .net when we making a setup of our project there is a option of security key and it uses a algorithm.but this algorithm is can be crack because they use the sum of all no. is divided by 7 and if remainder is 0 then it acceptable. please guide me in this area.
Rahul Singi

SOSDeveloper

[color=Blue][/color]Hello
There are technical ways to protect software so that it can be loaded only once. . SOS-KEY ALL Protector is a very technical process to use if a Developer want to protect his soft or his application from piracy. That