right, I NEED PROTECTION!!!

[Illspirit]

I have seriousley p****d someone off, and they're threatening to 'crack' my program and give it away free on the net when i finish it.

I'm not sure what he can do, but i know he knows some 'hackers' and other dodgy geezas

I need to protect my program!!!!!!

I'm going to sell it by mailing CD's. How can i:
a) Protect my CD from being copied
b) Protect my CD from being copied to the HD and run (so he cant make it available on the net for download!)

I am open to any ideas to protect my program!!!!

btw, is there a way to copyright my program or something, so that if he does 'pirate' it, i can report him or something

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

Every program can be cracked, without exception.

Hope this gives you hope.

All you can do is try to make a redundent over-lapping protection scheme, but that only means it will take the cracker longer. Who knows he might give up. I doubt it, I heard the Opera web browser was a ***** to crack, but they made a keygen for it. Just took a while.

[chrisjk]

Bury the proverbial hatchet with this geezer would be a good idea. Just put "©Copyright 2001, YourName" on the About form, or the startup form whatever, and in any documentation. Also, you could trademark the name of the app, and if it's an original idea, get onto the blower to the Patent office.

[PsyVision]

Durex is good for protection !

[Jotaf98]

I've heard of a good anti-hacker program, it's somwhere in this forum. Just look around a bit

Also, I've posted many ideas in a thread bout protecting programs. Sorry, but I can't remember where it is

[Illspirit]

chrisjk, if i put "©Copyright 2001, MyName", what will that enable me to do if he starts messin with my app??

I'm not giving in to this dude. If he cant take a joke then its not my problem, its his. I have plenty of ways to piss on his bonfire (including a taped confession of him hacking the school network), and i know plenty of dodgy geezas myself Its just my program, if he does manage to mess with that i wont be happy. He's not the dumbest person in the world, but he has no knowldge of VB and stuff like that, so stopping him shouldnt be too difficult

I also want to protect my program from being pirated by anyone when i start selling it, not just him

[vbzero]

Note: You can't protect any program or CD.

If you try ...you could implement some code that checks if any disassemblers are in memory. But if someone uses a disassemlber
that is not listed in the code he could disassemble your program
and filter the code.

So he could give the source code to anyone.

You even don't have to do that... it's enough if you can program.
In this way anyone could develop an app that works like yours.

Protection against that: You need a copyright.
But that won't protect against crackers. They are not interested in
any copyrights.

You also can copy any CD - there are very much little tools that
can crack any CD copy protection.

Do you know CloneCD? Try to copy a newer game that has a good
protection. You will succeed!

[chrisjk]

Originally posted by Illspirit
chrisjk, if i put "©Copyright 2001, MyName", what will that enable me to do if he starts messin with my app??

It means you can go to the coppers with evidence that it is your app. If nessecary take the git to court. You have proof it's yours and you took all reasonable steps to show that (by adding the copyright gumpf)

[egiggey]

or you could be a total jerk and fix the little guy up so it deletes his master boot record and primary partition if there is any tampering I sugest checking out some hacker sites and look at there sugestions as there the ones who do it there the best to ask

[Jotaf98]

Hey, I just though of a really easy way to do it: if you had something to identify his computer (like an AIP call to get the computer name, configuration or something), you could just compare it with one that was compiled with the program itself! You could even encrypt this, so no one finds out!

[chrisjk]

But if they guy hates him, how is he going to get any serial numbers/names?

[Jotaf98]

Hey, I said "use APIs"

You could send him a program that would retrieve his info, then he would send it to you and you would compile the program

[chrisjk]

Actually you said "use AIP" but nevermind

Yeah, but if he doesn't like him, how is he going to get the person to send this mysterious app back to him (assuming he accepts it in the first place). He'll just tell him to get lost surely??

[Jotaf98]

Well I though he just wanted to make sure that only the people that he wanted would be able to play his game...