7 replies to this topic

[hitesh70]

I have developed an application.I want to sell this application through pen drive.It is .net based application.No data will be installed on the user's hard disk.I want this application to run from the USB pen drive.is there any way to protect the pen drive from copying? so that use can not copy the whole pend drive.I know that this is possible because i have seen that many companies are selling product this way. Thank you in advance.If there is any other way to sell application please let me know.I just don't want piracy.

[WingedPanther]

First of all, I question how possible it is. You can pull some tricks to make it harder, but if you think about it, how are you going to get the files ON the drive in the first place? To run them, the user has to be able to read them. Conclusion, you are dealing with a read/write medium.

[hitesh70]

if you are trying to say that it is not possible have a look:Accounting Software
not only this i have seen many people using software like this.They come with pen drive at my office and shows me their accounts in pen drive, i tried to copy their pen drive but i could not.many companies are selling their software this way.All i want to say is this is possible.please help me out..

[lethalwire]

WP isn't saying it ISN'T possible.

To try and answer your question, try looking into: Copy protection for USB Drive

[WingedPanther]

hitesh70 said:

if you are trying to say that it is not possible have a look:Accounting Software
not only this i have seen many people using software like this.They come with pen drive at my office and shows me their accounts in pen drive, i tried to copy their pen drive but i could not.many companies are selling their software this way.All i want to say is this is possible.please help me out..

If you're point is that you can sell software that runs off a pen drive, I would agree with you that it is possible. I have a pen drive loaded with software from PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives that I use as my backup "office suite". However, I often take those same programs and run them off a folder in my desktop, and they run just as well.

copy protect USB drive - Google Search gives some things that may be relevant. However, they probably involve custom driver software to get the results you want. Depending on your target audience, this may or may not work. Also, all the links I followed seemed to assume that your customers will be running Windows (Ubuntu has a whole other set of tools that may circumvent what they've done). Personally, if you handed me such a device with your software, I'd ask for my money back instead. If I can't put the software on my hard-drive, I'm immediately incurring a performance hit when using it because of slow speeds.

[fayyazlodhi]

Putting aside the usability debate above, some time back i did some research for writing a spy application that runs (at least partly) out of a usb drive. It resembles with "IKnow Key" some what and can be googled.

Basically, the software installs without any easily visible trace on pc on the hard drive and runs from there. However, some administrative privileges associated with authorized users came only through a valid USB disk. To do that i did some research and found the following:

Each USB device has a unique key based upon which it can be programmed and helps to identify which key belongs to who and only THAT one is authorized.
How to get the Serial Number from a USB disk

Hiding the process of interacting with USB etc.
Dkom Process Hider - rohitab.com - Forums

http://www.blackhat....n-04-butler.pdf

Hope it helps.

[hitesh70]

i can not use any copy protected drive becouse i want to allow user to take the backup of the database file on their hard-disk.I have searched lot on this topic.It sounds impossible to me.

now i dont want to sell my software in the usb drive.I am gonna use online activation to control piracy.but the problem is that once user activates the software, how do i detect that that application is activated.is there any way to store the data that this application is activated. don't tell me registry because this way is not secure.Any information related to online activation will be helpful to me.i have decided to create file in system drive and my application check for that file every time it starts.If file found then application starts and if it doesn't then it ask for the key.any suggestion will be good!!

[WingedPanther]

You need to start with more precise requirements. Earlier, you said you wanted to protect it from copying. Now you seem to want partial protection from copying. Perhaps if you create two partitions this would be possible. Protect one partition, and store the data on a non-protected partition.