Paul Crowley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> "Trivial" is overstating it, I think. I've seen dongle-based license
> code designed such that if you tried modifying the code to skip the
> dongle check, the program's pointer arithmetic would go screwy and it
> would crash in horrible ways. It was a damn clever design, which I
> can't say much about here except that it depended on a fairly detailed
> understanding of the innards of several parts of a large and complex
> program, and so making the appropriate fix would be a sizeable job for
> a very skilled and patient hacker; for example, it did not depend on
> branches that were only taken when the dongle was absent.
>
> Of course, it could be cracked, but it wouldn't have been trivial.
I find that very hard to believe. At some point, you can (at worst)
simulate the returns of the routine that examines the dongle.
Even assuming they've done something really clever, though, once
cracked, it is cracked for all time. Building a tool to get around the
"clever copy protection" in an automatic way for programs using said
"clever copy protection" then becomes feasible, indeed, inevitable.
Almost all copy protection schemes are, in the end, snake oil. You
cannot prevent people from eventually cracking around them.
Manufacturers spend huge amounts of time fretting over finding ways to
annoy their customers, when (IMHO) lost revenue due to piracy is not
significantly reduced by copy protection. Their legitimate customers,
however, are often significantly hurt by the schemes.
Ah well. Another good argument for the open source model.
Perry
--
Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Quality NetBSD CDs, Support & Service. http://www.wasabisystems.com/
