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Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

dmitrybrant.com

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Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#31

Post by GuB-42 »

catlikesshrimp wrote: post #9

Why wasn't (isn't) this more widely used? It was clearly more effective than a cdkey. I know there is cost associated with the hardware, but surely the costumer can cough 15 more dollars. The only reason I can think of is wanting as wide adoption before max revenue as possible. But then, this has never been too popular, not even for games!

Having to put a physical device on your parallel port at the back of the computer is kind of annoying, especially if every software you use has one.

More common for games was to use the media itself for copy protection, using a variety of tricks to make copy more difficult. Other techniques involve printing some keys you have to enter using colors that don't render well in photocopies, or have you look at words a certain page of a thick user manual, the idea being that it is more expensive to go through the effort of copying this material than to buy the software legally.

One of my favorite is from Microprose games, for which the manual was a pretty good reference book on the subject of the game, that alone is worth buying. And the copy protection is about asking you about information contained in the book, for example, it may be some detail about a particular plane in a flight simulator, which means that a way to bypass copy protection is simply to be knowledgeable about planes!

Dongles were common, but mostly for expensive enterprise software. Also, dongles don't make cracking harder compared to all the other techniques, so for popular consumer software like games, it is likely to be a lot of inconvenience and a waste of money for limited results.

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#32

Post by SecretDreams »

nsoonhui wrote: post #27

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Als…

> which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade

This take is diametrically opposite to what end users need. In a world where "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user, buying a one off license for a software seems much more sane then SaaS. SaaS is like a plague for end users.

I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS.

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#35

Post by dataflow »

nsoonhui wrote: post #27

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Als…

> from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade.

Why should users upgrade or keep paying you when they already bought what they need and don't need anything else?

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#36

Post by antonvs »

ruleryak wrote: post #7

Many a crack back in the day was even more simple still, we'd just find and alter the right JE or JNE into a JMP and we're off to the races. As the author found, the tough part is just finding and interpreting where and how the protection was implemented. If throwing the exe in a hex editor gave you access to String Data References (not always the case, but more common than not) then you'd just fail the check you wer…

> Many a crack back in the day was even more simple still, we'd just find and alter the right JE or JNE into a JMP and we're off to the races.

I did that with dBASE III, which used ProLok "laser protection" from Vault Corporation - a signature burned onto the diskette with a laser. Back then, I found it amazing that Ashton-Tate actually spent money to contract with a copy protection company for something that could be so easily defeated by a teenager reading assembler.

They could have easily just written the same kind of code themselves. An example of the power of marketing over substance.

I was able to replicate that protection mechanism just by scratching a diskette with a pin. The "laser" was a meaninglessly advanced-sounding solution that added no value compared to any other means of damaging a diskette.

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#37

Post by throw101010 »

nsoonhui wrote: post #27

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Als…

> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand.

In my experience this continues to this day due to people who require drawing on air-gapped computers, because the drawings/simulations they work on are highly sensitive (nuclear, military, and other sensitive infrastructure).

But I'm sure there are also old-fashioned people who like the portability/sovereignty of not having to rely on a third-party license server as you suggest.

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#38

Post by nsoonhui »

SecretDreams wrote: post #32
nsoonhui wrote: post #27

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Als…

> which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade This take is diametrically opposite to what end users need. In a world where "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user, buying a one off license for a software seems much more sane then SaaS. SaaS is like a plague for end users.…

In a perfect world, I would have agreed with you, even if it's diametrically opposite to my interest as a software developer cum business owner.

But in an imperfect world whereby our dependencies ( software components that we use) and platforms that we need to build/rely on ( like Civil 3D) do charge us on annual basis, and that some of users expect perpetual bug fixes from us, with or without a support contract of sorts, SaaS seems to only way to go for our sustainability.

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#39

Post by Joe_Cool »

jojobas wrote: post #23
aizk wrote: post #14

Very cool to read an article about windows 95 still being used in production - a nice contrast to the infinite AI hype cycle over everything. Tech may move fast in flashy areas but not in the more "boring" parts of the industry.

Win95 is only 30 years old and runs natively on some modern hardware. Apparently there is important stuff still running in emulated PDP-11s, almost double the age.

It needs quite a few fixes to even run in a VM. But it can be done: https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x

Re: Defeating a 40-year-old copy protection dongle

#40

Post by jbm »

nsoonhui wrote: post #27

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Als…

My dad used to use this kind of dongle for a civil engineering program called 'Cosmos'. Just wild to see it, it was so annoying to because sometimes it would simply not be detected on our 80386.
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