| Local storage: |
Solutions which solely
rely on data stored on a local computer can not protect against
manual sweeps of a hard-disk, product such as Norton CleanSweep or the 20-minute
reinstallation of the OS in a disk partition. |
| Wrappers: |
Wrappers are software
aimed at protecting another software. But what protects a wrapper? They
are actually smaller pieces of code which are easier to disassemble and
understand than the large applications they are supposed to protect. |
| Licence generators:
|
Solutions using a
commercial or free licence generator can be broken by those who also
downloaded or bought such low-cost number generators. |
| Short codes: |
The shorter an
activation or licence code, the easier it is to generate dummy ones and
try them in sequence, even without a generator. Credit card numbers are
an example. |
| DLL-based: |
A DLL is a library
exposing its entry points (procedures, functions, data). Except under
.Net, it is not possible to detect DLL spoofing. It is so easy to
create a DLL with the right function name that will always return
"true" and enable the execution of the protected application. |
| One-off calls: |
Libraries whose API
require just one verification call during the initialisation phase of
the protected application actually help hackers as they only have to
analyse the initialisation phase, which accounts for far less than 1%
of the code of any application. |
| No hardware locking:
|
Without hardware
locking, it takes just one single licence code to share indefinitely.
Period. |
| Optional hardware
locking: |
Solutions proposing
hardware locking as an option do this because they actually place task
and time constraints on both users and developers. Because developers
want to focus on software development (instead of licence code
generation and management) and want to ensure maximum ease of use for
their users, they never use such options. Such solutions are then only
as resilient as those with no hardware locking (above). |
Email locking:
|
Web servers sending
just one 30-day trial key to a mailbox can be used to get unlimited
trial thanks to the sheer mass of companies on the Internet providing
an unlimited
number of email addresses for free. It takes less than a minute to get
a free mailbox.
|
| No protection: |
In front of so many
similar and deeply flawed products, some professional developers
realise that legacy solutions are not worth spending between $20 to
$1500 of their hard earned cash for something they know will not
protect the product of their work. This is a sad reality. |
