Archive for the ‘Software Piracy’ Category
As we all know, there are may ways to conduct business in the Software Industry.  We have been very fortunate to meet, discuss and share ideas regarding approaches to not just development and marketing – but also the business side of how to grow and maintain a revenue stream.  It is amazing how often discussions regarding licensing end up talking about how to reduce cost and improve profitability.  Licensing after all is fundamentally a key component to the success of a commercial software business.  Without it, opportunities are easily missed.Â
Recently we received an interesting set of questions from a few key customers regarding why they should change from their existing licensing system/approaches to a solution like Nitro-LM. Â GREAT QUESTION!
The answer to us is simple – everything depends on quality ‘information’ coming to you at the ‘right’ time.  In principle, any customer would agree, but there are multiple factors involved with being able to take what should be obvious and translate it into a useful business mechanism.
It is not just about ‘control’ – it is about ‘understanding’
The core problem is that most of the software licensing solutions on the market are fundamentally flawed.  Most commercial licensing solutions do just one thing – focus on the ‘licensing’ of a product (like a light switch).  As long as the Software Managers and Developers view licensing also as a ‘light switch’ of plug-able functionality in their application, opportunities will continue to be missed specific to what licensing can -actually- do for them.  Licensing is not just the mechanism for ‘control’, it is the mechanism for ‘understanding’ – in the end you need a solution that delivers both.
To help visualize the problem, we created a small ‘visual’ whitepaper. Â This clearly documents some complex information relationships that hold back a Software Development Company, and also presents how Nitro-LM can dramatically impact that process.
>>> DOWNLOAD THE WHITEPAPER HERE! Â <<<
Enjoy!
Disclaimer – Simplified Logic respects intellectual property rights and in no way supports using hacked or cracked software. What follows is simply an educational exercise with the intent of highlighting the security dangers of releasing unprotected software in virtual machine environments such as the Adobe Flash Player.
It’s fairly common for me to see comments on blogs and forums playing down the security risk from decompiling software. They say things like “Source code isn’t intellectual property”, or “Nothing is 100% secure, so why bother with protection?”. While it’s true that in virtual machine environments NOTHING is 100% secure, there can be great value in taking some measures to protect your software. Many company’s approaches to software security are akin to the Jeff Foxworthy comedy bit about putting the house keys under the mat with a sign on the front door saying “The key is under the mat…” Your only hope is a blind burglar (listen at 20:25 into the clip).
The Online Flex Meetup Group is Organized by John Mason out of Atlanta, GA. His group attracts attendees from all over the USA and the World. We received an Invitation to present to this group on June 10, 2009. The event was recorded and also covered some material that was also presented at the 360|Flex Conference in Indianapolis, IN in May 2009. Enjoy!
The Nitro-LM licensing system is very feature packed. For a new user, it can sometimes be a little bit daunting to get set up and running. I’ve put together a screencast showing some common tasks to complete when getting started in the Nitro-LM system. If you haven’t yet signed up for a FREE 100 license account for a year, go to the Installation/Support page and follow the instructions.
I recently had an opportunity to present Nitro-LM to the Atlanta flash user group on the topic of DRM and the Flash Platform. The slides are attached (you’ll have to rotate them in Adobe Reader, for some reason, sliderocket didn’t print them out right-side up) along with the recording of the webex meeting.
So this is one of the more interesting problems that Software Development Companies are faced with. While this should be obvious to anyone in business, it is amazing how few pay attention to it. Imaging how difficult it is to predict your revenue stream when you have customers that are NOT REQUIRED to pay in order to use your software. But why should they? Your own policies actually gave them permission to NOT pay you (e.g. via the grant of a “perpetual” license…) Here is a situation that ACTUALLY happened!
We never thought we would ever see this in a licensed commercial software product, but here it is…
In part two, we cover using the Asset Encrypter to encrypt AIR module swfs. This demo also contains a before and after look at the code using a decompiler.
Modifying or replacing a DLL is one way that a hacker can gain access to your protected application. If you’re using the Nitro-LM solution with the DLL client, or even if you’re only interested in protecting your own DLLs, the solution provided here should prove useful to you. For our purposes, we’ll focus on how you can code your application to prevent tampering on the nitrolm.dll inside a C++ application.
Continue reading “Prevent DLL Tampering on Windows Apps” »
Doug McCune, world renowned expert on Adobe Flex/AIR and recently published Author, recently put on a presentation in England regarding decompiling SWFs. He covered many of the free and commercial applications used for both compiling and decompiling SWFs, and also the benefits/issues with obfuscation and encryption.