Time limits for demo's

[RJHollins]

what are you looking for anyway?

Curious to take a peek at what hackers can see.

edit:
oo thanks for the link ... i'll look at it !

[Drnkhobo]

So, the question B ... can we see enough with the demo ... or ... anybody know of a similar free one

It is ful triall for 30 days (little time lock system lol)

Curious to take a peek at what hackers can see.

gooood luck man! I dont really know machine code and such but in the code I posted I just looked for words . . .like Lynx motion controller ect.

It was just really to see what is viewable from a dll. I have no plans to go any further as I dont have the time to spend learning. Let alone finding a way to obfuscate certain code (like serials ect) in the decompiled view.

tbh im getting the feeling that the only sensible thing to do now is include a *light* copy protection system that discourages "normal" users. This is because from what I have seen its PRETTY easy to decompile your dll, mess around with it (take out copy protection) and then re-compile it again as the "cracked version".

Just dont make it easy enough for someone to share serials with their buddies. What I do is lock it to their HDD-ID . So the serial only works if its got the right Machine ID. If its given to their buddies, they all have different ID's. But thats about as far as I go with it.

@Jay - Yeh, its quite strange to see those module names in the decompiled dll. I guess thats why each dll is quite big for a little code. Im no guru but imagine how easy it is to recompile it after! Especially with the right tools!!

[Jay]

after playing around with this,the contents of an export appear to be encrypted with with something called ACProtect, there are many unpackers/decrypters for it on the web.

it is all gobbledygook to me! I tried watching a few reverse engineering tutorial vids on locating and dumping pieces of code from exe's and dll files! lol i will never get that hour of my life back! didn't understand one bit of it ha ha!

back to FS for me, My system is now sanitized of those geek tools!

Best regards

[Drnkhobo]

i will never get that hour of my life back! didn't understand one bit of it ha ha!

back to FS for me, My system is now sanitized of those geek tools!

ahh, I can feel the sterile, cleanliness from here my friend!

I think im gonna do the same!

Luckily it was only 20 mins or so of my precious life gone so im not too fussed

[RJHollins]

Hi Drnkhobo,

Thanks for the info and the sharing of your observations. I also agree with many of the conclusions, still, I feel this was important to look. There are probably other 'tools' [as alluded to].

What I have NOT seen [or at least at the level I looked], where the very specific string names, or PRIM names that would directly identify a piece. What I did see, looked like the entire FS toolkit was in there ! But I did not see specific 'Label' names nor strings. More than likely, I was not looking correctly ... maybe via a search function.

Regardless ... it's part of the 'education'. It's one thing to hear about stuff, but I also like to see and examine for myself too. The ability to do something about it is yet another aspect ... I still need to poke around some more.

At this point, I'm going to stay with my lame protection for this first project.

You mention 'locking' to a users HDD-ID. Next to a network MAC address, this was one method that I thought to go with. I see the PRIM for it, and it does trigger a value ... but I never found out WHICH drive it was referring too ?!?
After reading talk of trying to use it, I also read of issue that could come up with using it ... so I put the idea on the side and just continued to work on the project.

So a question would be ... have you had any issue that you'd care to mention using the HDD-ID technique ???

If you wouldn't mind, it be of interest how you used it [NOT asking for special secrets]. I can think of two possible ways in 1. User has to run an app that emails you the HDD-ID, and then a custom serial is sent back ... or, you have developed a type of user key generator of some fashion ... any way I think to do this seems to involve a lot more on both sides to activate, let alone if the user changes their system around. I understand that that would be consider just part of doing business. This too was some of the 'warnings' I got when considering a more elaborate scheme.

As I said, it would be of interest to hear what you care to share of your experience. Ideally, it could be of interests if a type of community developed routine could be designed ... again, just thinking of a base-line protection concept that could be generic. But then again, this could also raise too many other issues ... I don't know

All said and done, I DID my loss of time thinking and testing some concepts ... I did learn things from the exercise, and it did help me get to a simple base-line strategy. If it works well, and people like using the tools I develop, then great ... I'll do the next one for public release ... if not, I will make them for myself [the whole reason for starting this anyway]. The last recourse would be custom, personalized editions by invitation only. and THAT is what I wanted to see in the disassembler. If I can see that, I may be able to figure a way to [at least] make somebody work to alter that. [maybe].

Interesting stuff. I hope we can stay focus from the programming side, and get some education.

Thanks everyone.

[Drnkhobo]

Hey Mr.Hollins thanks for the reply, appreciated

You mention 'locking' to a users HDD-ID. Next to a network MAC address, this was one method that I thought to go with. I see the PRIM for it, and it does trigger a value ... but I never found out WHICH drive it was referring too ?!?

Yep, as far as I know it loads the drive which the plugin is run from. Might be wrong about this tho. . .

So a question would be ... have you had any issue that you'd care to mention using the HDD-ID technique ???

Hehehe, yeah quite a tricky one to do right The main thing is that using this for registrations, each time you re-install OS or format or get a new PC, you have a different HDD-ID. Which means another unlocking to do.

If you wouldn't mind, it be of interest how you used it [NOT asking for special secrets].

In my case it works a bit differently. Id be happy to discuss more details via PM but essentially it runs on a serial & HDD-ID system. The premise, basically, is to have a serial system & lock that serial to a specific machine. To do this you first need to get the end-users HDD-ID & then lock the serial to that HDD-ID & after that, send it to them to unlock.

What I did see, looked like the entire FS toolkit was in there ! But I did not see specific 'Label' names nor strings. More than likely, I was not looking correctly ... maybe via a search function.

I think youre right here, there must be more to the decompiled code than meets the eye. Im sure there are apps that help the crackers on their way. Id reckon its pretty easy to find your strings ect (if u know what u r doing) because the other module names are there too . . .

[RJHollins]

Thinking about practical programming strategy for DEMO's, something else I've not been able to figure ...

Oftentimes I see demo's that offer X amount of time for full use ... a 'trial period'. Or they offer an X amount of times the app can be run before expiring.

Knowing that we can have an app create an 'external' text file ... I'm wondering if an 'internal' solution could be designed.

A first question would be ... how could we determine WHEN a app has first been run ? The app could be downloaded and maybe a week later the user starts to evaluate. How to determine that ??

I think I've understood that the RUBY code box will retain variable data. I'm not absolutely certain what this entails, but if this the case, IS there a possible solution/strategy available due to this 'feature' ?

Understood that all this can be thwarted ... but would like to have a distinction from a DEMO to a fully licensed app or VST.

Looking at how can we design a time/use limited trial that begins when user first runs the app or VST. Would sure appreciate conversation and ideas on accomplishing this.

Thanks everyone!