Question
Pretty much all my career, I worked with building solutions (customized applications for a single customer). Now that my company is going in developing software for the masses, a lot of packaging is waiting for us.
I wanna ask about licensing software. How to generate serial numbers and activation numbers. What are my options for licensing software in general.
I realize that it's sort of a general question but it's a conversation starter.
Answer
Our licence model works using public/private key cryptography. They send us thier name and contact details, which we encrypt using our private key. The encrypted file is then sent back to the licencee which they enter into the application. The application has our public key embedded in the binary (or if they have a connection to the net, it pulls it off our site) and it uses that to decrypt the licence information. If the decrypted licence matches the details that they entered then they are licenced to use the product!
By using private/public key cryptography we give our application a trust that the data in the licence key is actually from us (authenticity of the licence)
There are other neat things you can do with this, like encoding subscription levels into the licence key. The application will decrypt the licence key and see that they are only allowed to use certain bits of functionality.
This can be attacked though. For example a blackhat can either remove the whole licence key checking part of the binary, or update the stored public key in the application to one that they have generated. They will then be able to make it accept their own licence. However since our applications are not that mainstream we dont consider this a major threat.
< br > via < a class="StackLink" href=" http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5606/" >License Models< /a>
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