Board index » delphi » Need a license component

2006-01-19 02:39:45 AM
delphi204
Hello all,
I would much appreciate any recommendations about a license component so
that I can make my application commercial. Its a small application so I dont
want to use any hardlocks etc. I am using D6.
TIA
 

Peter S. writes:
It depends on what you mean a licence component. Is it to protect your
application? You can try mxProtector from www.maxcomponents.net or you
can roll your own i.e. release a trial version and then have another
version which can check for the existence of a file that contains the
licence key. This is what I have done for my application, VeriTime.
--
Cheers,
Phillip Flores
"Track your time...Use VeriTime"
www.pcfworks.com
 

sourceforge.net/projects/tponguard
It is a former TurboPower product that is now open source. It may not
be "state of the art", but, it may be sufficient "to keep the honest
people honest" which is about all licensing software can do.
There may be other similar products that are also open source, you
might try searching SourceForge.
 

"Peter S." <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes:
I'm interested to see replies to this, as I too am re-evaluating my method of protecting my software from piracy. It doesn’t help as there seems to be a lot of conflicting advice around on what should be done. I have just spent best part of a day reading pages like these:
www.woodmann.com/fravia/protec.htm
lastbit.com/vitas/antihack.asp
www.inner-smile.com/nocrack.phtml
As cracks exist for nearly all major software I know that its impossible to make software crack proof. After all, if the giants of the industry like Symantec & MS cant do it what chance have I! However, I'd like to make it 'difficult' for the casual/moderately skilled cracker.
Searching the net, finds recommendations to encrypt your code in someway(?) so that it isn’t obvious to people using things like Soft ICE what’s going on. Not sure how to do that myself but I found:
ICE Licence ->www.ionworx.com/IceLicense.html
EXECryptor ->www.strongbit.com/
They both talk about encrypting, searching for de{*word*81}s/dissemblers etc.
Information regarding whether one should try and look for the presence of these de{*word*81}s, check your exe’s checksome ect seems conflicting. Some say do it, others say its so easy to bypass it’s a waste of time. So I’m interested to see what people suggest.
For the past few years I have used TurboPower's Ongaurd found here: sourceforge.net/projects/tponguard/
although I have had people say that its easy to crack? It deters casual piracy via forgetfulness etc but from my understanding of what crackers do, I'd have thought it was fairly easy to disassemble and find the registration checks, and then patch the code?
After my research today I have a made a few quick changes. My original Onguard based check, called by trying to use various functions linked to buttons on the GUI, now sets a variable value. The message to say that the trial has expired is shown by a procedure that is called via timer, that calls a procedure depending on the value of the variable. I have also tried to make this a little more difficult to crack by encrypting the string for the message box caption and message and encrypting the procedure call that displays the message. Thus while I believe a hacker would be able to see the ‘name�of message box, it would be more difficult to trace this back to the timer. I guess it would also be worth encrypting the procedure calls made by the GUI too.
Checking the exe’s checksum would seem worthwhile if only to establish the software had not been corrupted when being ‘delivered�to the user.
Hope the comments help, looking forward to hearing what others do.
Pete
 

Thank you all for your replies. I really have some evaluation to do now!!!!
 

"Pete" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>writes
I also use OnGuard to protect a specialty program from casual hacking. My
market is small, and I know the customers by name, so I am not too worried
about finding installation codes on warez sites.
I got to thinking about beefing up the security one day after adding some
"industry first" features, in order to prevent reverse engineering. I think
I'm going to use Ionworx's SecureCode for this, to encrypt sections of code.
Now, having the ability to encrypt some code gives rise to the possibility
of putting the serial number checking code within the encrypted portion.
But you still have the problem of a hacker bypassing the code. So it
occured to me that instead of putting just "bad" things in the secure
section, that could be bypassed by insertion of jump at the appropriate
point, I should put some "good" things in there too, so that if they jump
over the security code, they won't get the benefit of the program. Now I'm
planning (haven't implemented it yet) to move the function that displays the
results of the calculations into the secure area. So, if you skip over the
security in order to prevent it from popping up a message saying "Unlicensed
copy, aborting" and then halting execution, you can calculate all you want,
but you will never see the results.
Cheers,
Van Swofford
Tybee Jet Corp.
 

To feel moderately safe (and I stress moderately) you have to :
1) Make sure that a good portion of the protection scheme is your own.
Crackers attack standard protection schemes; if your is different they might
not bother.
2) Check for a valid licence in 2 (or more places). One way is used to
display the message that the licence is not valid. Because it is UI based
that might easily be cracked. But you don't care because the other checks,
the ones that do not display any message but maim the software internally
are totally silent; they never generate any message. so it is hard for the
cracker to know where to put the first breakpoint.
HTH,
Olivier
 

siliconrealms.com/index.shtml
 

FWIW, I am using ExeCryptor for such code mangling. I was put off the
IonWorx stuff due to the poor support responses that keep getting a
mention.
/Matthew Jones/
 

thing? Or is that optional?
/Matthew Jones/
 

Hi,
I make some search about ExeCryptor on the net, I found some discussion :
www.exetools.com/forum/showthread.php
About Themida I found this :
forum.exetools.com/showthread.php
I should to see here before to buy any protection :
forum.exetools.com/forumdisplay.php
Regards,
IT
"Jason" <XXXX@XXXXX.COM>a écrit dans le message de news:
43cf6c26$XXXX@XXXXX.COM...

IT writes:
In practice there's no crack of EXECryptor. And EXECryptor bypassing is
still open question for crackers.
Regards,
StrongBit Team
www.strongbit.com
www.softcomplete.com
www.textolution.com