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javaauthenticationhardwarecopy-protectionpiracy-protection

Piracy protection using USB based hardware solution

i want to protect my Java product by using some USB-based authentication and password management solution like you can buy it here: aladdin This mean that you have to connect a USB stick with a special software on it, before you can start your application.

I would like to here some experience of users which have used hardware like this.

  • Is this as safe as it sounds?
  • General: How much money you would spend to protect a software which would sell 100 times?

I will obfuscate my Java code and save some user specific OS settings in a crypted file which is lying somewhere on the hard disk. I dont want to constrain the user to do a online registration, because the internet is not necessary for the application.

Thanks

Comment: The company i am working for is using Wibu for now more than 5 years.

Solution

  • Please just don't. Sell your software at a price point that represents its worth, with a basic key-scheme if you must to keep honest people honest, and leave it at that. The pirates will always steal it, and a hardware dongle will just cause grief for your honest customers.

    Besides, any scheme you build in will just be defeated by reverse engineering; if you make it a pain to use your software, you will motivate otherwise honest people to defeat it, or to search the internet for a crack. Simply make the protection less painful than searching for a crack.