Program Security

And what, change the security scheme again? And again? And again?

The point of application security isn't to make it unbreachable, it's to minimize the amount of theft.
That's why the cracks/keygens/etc tend to be version specific. Each time they release a new update most companies will change the security slightly to force the public to wait on a new crack or break down and buy it legit.

There'd be no value in a publisher just releasing updates that do nothing but change security. That's way too much hassle when they can just change the security in each legitimate update.

In fact you can use the same keys for every version of this program; not sure why there are different keygens. The same legitimate product key from three versions ago works just fine.

They could, but then what? They could order sites to take down this sort of thing, but not everyone will comply, and it's too simple to just re-upload elsewhere. They could threaten to sue, and even go through with it, but that won't do much good either. These are usually individuals who won't be able to cough any significant amount of compensation, and the best they might be able to hope for is a jail term to discourage people from cracking their stuff.

It's a futile game of whack-a-mole that takes up too much time and resources, and could leave you with a bad reputation if you stuff up and inconvenience legitimate customers with your security measures.

Yeah, but taking them down from sites like Youtube would at least avoid kiddies and warez n00bs from stealing software left and right. I'm not suggesting sending partyvans after these hackers (who's probably in Eastern Europe and China) but hunting down torrent trackers would minimize losses. Most people would choose to just fork up thirty bucks if they had to spend days to get the program for free.



I was thinking along the lines of Kortes and Eos; AhnLab has done a fair job of preventing hacking (at least some of the time) and they have their own suite of Internet Security programs. I was wondering if they were using the same HackShield type protection on their own programs.

Maybe the keys could be changed every time there's a definition/version check? The key is stored both locally and sent to a backup e-mail address and is invalidated in ten days. By replying to the e-mail you can ask for clemency so when you get a new PC you can use your old key. If you couldn't even access your e-mail account you have to confirm your personal information (incl. payment confirmation) to get a new key.
I read somewhere over a decade ago that the first thing you do to protect your passwords is to change them frequently. Good idea?

(was going to say something about BSA but Eos got there before me ._.)