Al,
Ever wounder why copy protection went the way of the dinosaur? It is SO
easy to crack an application, especially one not written in ASM (self
modifing code is a fairly good way, but not in a 32bit, protected
environment), if you have a little talent, a copy of SoftICE or similar,
a knowledge of ASM and a hex editor. I used to do this for kicks about
10 years ago, not that I was very good.
The only way I can think of doing it is to have a tiny EXE, which calls
.dat files (maybe really DLL's) and decrypt's them - but then, you STILL
have to have the key on the client's machine, which is not good....
I can see why people want to protect their investments, but I think
sometimes the amount of time and effort put into making a
registration/protection system is outweighed by the (smaller) amount of
time it takes a semi-skilled person to crack it.
Another thing - Delphi's optimisation's can kill most protection
schemes, 'cos it optimises unused variables out, moves stuff around to
make it all more efficient etc, which tends to make it easier to crack.
Using an EXE compressor (look on www.betanews.com for one which is
supposed to be OK) could be a good option - reduces a lot of Delphi's
bloat too.... Then again, ANY method of compression can be decompressed
- thats the point.
Another idea - if your app is crippled, JUST put out the crippled
version, and make the user DL a new EXE when they register - that way,
the code is not in there to be cracked! OK, so its a bit of a pain for
the user, but with fat pipes etc, not really an issue - say, a 600K
zipped EXE (but not the rest of the package) is not really an issue if
the user is prepared to pay for the product in the first place.
Oh, and yes, it _is_ offtopic, but definatly not offtopic enough to not
be here...
Just IMO.
Nic.
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