Subj : Re: Reg methods
To   : Scott Adams
From : Jasen Betts
Date : Sun Sep 30 2001 11:43 pm

Hi Scott.

 SA>> Method 3: Complete exes are sent out with the imbeeded
 SA>> information. Advantage: Harder to track if its well placed into
 SA>> the exe and not in obvious spots like "Registeration code" found
 SA>> in a hex editor.  A bit tougher to break. Disadvantage: Usually
 SA>> takes up alot of space and expense sending out the files (if by
 SA>> mail-disk).

 JB>> You can fit quite a bit on one of those credit-card cd-roms, and
 JB>> they'll go in a standard envelope. they don't fit trayless cd-rom
 JB>> drives though, and can be hard to load into some tray ones too.

 SA> Credit-card cd-roms?  Maybe I'm missing something.

a little CD-rom about the size of a credit-card they can hold more than
10 megs, and don't cost much to mail. an 8cm cd-rom will also fit in a
standard envelope.

 SA> You mean the scheme like Microsoft uses?

you could do that or if you're burning the cd-roms yourself put
personalised stuff on each one. like method 4


 SA>> So does anyone know of a general scheme that seems to work most
 SA>> often that you don't see crackers for?

 JB>> 4dos detects any good attempt to crack it's registration and
 JB>> pretends to be registered but occasionally spits out a cryptic
 JB>> error message saying to contact it's makers :)

 SA> Now that's sneaky!  Yes indeed but works.

 JB>> I have't seen any crack for 4dos that actually works. 4dos uses a
 JB>> special registration program

 SA> Yeah and that's top secret :) So that'd make 2 things then that
 SA> and Wiz2 could not be cracked.

 JB>> write your registration verifying code in such a way that it
 JB>> doesn't contain any direct references to the registration code,
 JB>> you may need to use assembler

 SA> What you mean I shouldn't put "Registration information" in the
 SA> same sentence as the reg key for easy hex editing? :)

don't even use a direct reference to the registration code variable.

eg (pardon my syntax)

  r:pchar;
 ...
  r := @registrationcode+3141;
 ...
  dec(r,3141)

that way when they search through the code for something that contains the
address of the registration code they won't find it (as the compiler should
do the initial (@registrationcode+3141) and put the result in the
executable...

 SA> There is another method some have tried over the eyars but it
 SA> never caught on.  Hardware configs where they uses serial numbers
 SA> and such to config the reg key based on that.

That's a pain if you get a new computer. but I've seen it used to alaunch
the config program which is probably a good idea.

 SA> The exe would have to be sent with some data file that held this info
 SA> for the creator of the reg.  Today it'd be using the Windows registry
 SA> stuff.

 -=> Bye <=-

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