Mathieu Langlois wrote:
I think the reason for obfuscation is serial number theft. At least
that's what monkeybread recommends it for. So that the serial number
can't be extracted easily from a compiled app, which is easy if the
serial number is not obfuscated in code, else it will appear in plain
text that can be searched with an hex editor. Including the customer
information in the serial number will not prevent that kind of theft.
You may find this 2002 article written by Ambrosia interesting and relevant.
--
So, I'm working for this shareware company, and I want to make sure that
my job is secure. You have to understand that even a 10% variance in our
registrations means that someone may need to start checking the
classifieds. At the same time, it's becoming more evident that people
aren't just not paying for our software -- they are actually going out
of their way to share license codes with others over the Internet. Some
ingenious folks have even reverse engineered our software and figured
out how to generate their own license codes.
Now, we don't live with our heads in the sand. We knew what was
happening. The Internet was the great facilitator of homework
assignments and world peace, but it had also become a way for people to
get codes for any software they wanted. We felt action was required, but
we remembered the trauma of our last change in policy when we required
people to register the software instead of just asking nicely.
So over the course of many lunches (many of which didn't include pizza
or beer, but did involve some yummy sandwiches from Arby's), we
discussed various ways for improving the whole registration system from
our standpoint without making the process onerous for our loyal
customers. Simplicity was the keyword. The final piece of the technical
puzzle fell into place one weekend as I drove through Canada, when I
recalled a bit of algebra that would make our license code algorithm
quite secure without violating any treaties or munitions bans.
When I finally contacted Andrew, I said to him one word: "Polynomials".
--
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/webboard/Forum14/HTML/000052.html
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