unbreakable...???

source: http://www.astalavista.com/technolog...c/piracy.shtml

NEW TECHNOLOGY PROMISES TO RAISE THE STAKES IN SOFTWARE PIRACY

A new technology has been developed whereby software suffers imminent
failure if attempts are made to engineer unlicensed use. Miracode Corp.
announced Thursday (February 28, 2002) that it had made public a software
tool which can be used by software developers to finally create secure and
un-crackable software.

Currently, a war has waged between software developers and teams of
"crackers" (those proficient in reverse engineering software for purposes of
piracy) with the latter always seeming to maintain the upper hand... until
now perhaps.

Staying competitive in the market has always required some companies to demo
their latest and greatest software developments. However, allowing potential
customers to try the product before purchasing has had certain risks. At
some point, the demo must end and the software user must "pay to play". A
mechanism is built into the demo insuring this. This mechanism is targeted
by crackers and once defeated a "crack" is posted on the internet allowing
others to easily do the same. Because no copy-written software code is being
distributed, web sites and other distribution channels freely continue the
distribution of these "cracks".

The possibility of losing the sale to "unlimited play" has led to temporary
solutions which have all ultimately been defeated by determined crackers.
This new technology tackles the problem from a different perspective and
offers a new option to software developers struggling with licensing
violations: "pay or else".

Said Rob Hock, company P/R, "Regardless as to whether [miracode] is in place
or not, using crack ultimately compromises the integrity of computer
systems. In order to have a secure environment, the legitimacy of software
code must be maintained. This is ever so important today as the internet
connects all of these machines together. While [miracode] cannot ensure that
crack will go away, it does render its results anything but desirable.
Whether developers choose to incorporate [miracode] protection into their
software or not, ultimately all will benefit from the increased awareness in
which [miracode] lends itself."

Beyond protecting the customer's software, Miracode is distributed under the
same protection it sells and can be reached on the web at
http://miracode.com

Credits:

CONTACT INFO:
Rob Hock, Public Relations
Miracode Corp.
[email protected]

Toughts by Mr. Ed

I recently read the article entitled "New Technology Promises to Raise
the
Stakes in Softw. Piracy" posted on Astalavista.com under Home ->
Standards/Organisations/Technologies -> Library -> Miscellaneous Home.
I
was quite concerned to read that Miracode has developed "MilitaryStrength
Software Security" that promises to make your programs invincible to
crackers. Wow. My pelvis was tingling. I immediately downloadedtheir
demo utility, called David (hell if I know why, I guess all the goodnames
were taken), which itself is protected by their super security. Now,I've
got some craking skills, but I've also got enough common sense to know
that no security is perfect, especially if written by gnomes. Don'tever
trust gnomes. I don't know if gnomes were involved here at all, but
believe me, Miracode's David is not all it promisses to be. It tookabout
5 minutes convince the program that it was intended to run past its
evaluation period. This was accomplished by setting the permissionson
the registry key used by David to record its usage statistics so thatthe
program could no longer update it's keys. It's also worth noting that
deleting the keys restarts the evaluation period back at 100 uses, 10
days. These keys can be found under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Miracode
after installing the program. Obviously this information is useless
if
you can't set the permissions for the keys (you're not runningNT/2000/XP,
you yourself don't have access to the registry, or you're wondering
"registry? what's a registry and where can I get one?"). Still, it'sgood
to know that Miracode has in no way created the perfect anti-piracy
security. We can all return to our normal lives - cracking, hacking,
and
hunting gnomes.

Mr. Ed
([email protected])

Astalavista - feel free to post this email anywhere and in anyway on
your
site. Please, post it, the public needs to know.

[email protected]

Rob Hock - RE: Toughts by Mr. Ed:

Dear Ed the gnome hunter (?),

You assume too much and invest too little. Please at least read thedocs
before misrepresenting something you know nothing about. I canunderstand
your excitement at the ease at which you circumvent the "Demo HasExpired"
road block. The same five minutes spent reading the first page of thedocs
would have helped you realize that absolutely nothing hinges on this.Your
"solution" does not impede a program's ability to expire. It simply
impedes the program's ability to notify YOU that it has expired.MIRACODE
protected program will still EXPIRE regardless and will be UNUSABLEafter
TRIAL period. There is no MAGIC registry key or keys. Nor is theresome
SPECIAL piece of code to hunt down and destroy. Thanks for playing.

Rob Hock
http://miracode.com