The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

CD-ROM Serial

Greetings!

I am not sure if it is possible but I have to try. My idea is to
protect software from illegal copying by CD-ROM serial number.
Protected program will run from CD, get its serial (if there is one) and check it. There are some numbers or letters near center of (every?) CD. Have you seen them?

ALIEN
Saturday, February 28, 2004

I'm not an expert in CD burning, but I think that when you do a CD-to-CD copy, everything is duplicated including the serial number.

Jordan
Saturday, February 28, 2004

Hmm! Competition? Welcome to to the jungle.

Well, long story short, not possible, but there are other methods and a bit of self promotion is not out of line, is it?

http://www.seplweb.com

Regards

KayJay

Inidan Developer in India
Saturday, February 28, 2004

Oh! The Whitepaper is not uploaded yet. Will do so shortly.

Inidan Developer in India
Saturday, February 28, 2004

I think Jordan's right -- if you "press" your CDs (the traditional way to mass-produce CDs) the disks will all have identical data, down to the serial number. There are some third-party solutions that can burn a unique ID into the disk after it's been pressed. E.g.,

http://www.postscribedid.com/en/portal/g-spec_e.html

Alternatively, if you used CD-R technology instead to copy the disks, you could probably find or write a program that would burn a unique number into the disc when it's being burned. However, CD-R's aren't very cost-effective or fast for large production runs.

If you really need strong protection, there are copy-protection systems like SafeDisc -- although these have a tendency to really piss off your legitimate customers, and even these can be defeated.

Robert Jacobson
Saturday, February 28, 2004

CDs do not have a "serial number". The lettering that can be seen around the clamping region on the disc is not machine-readable.

If you really require CD-based protection (i.e. FlexLM from MacroVision or a value-add such as support for registered users won't cut it) then check out the Tages CD protection system. It is the only one that I know of that has not been defeated.

David Jones
Saturday, February 28, 2004

David Jones,

There is one more that is (not yet) defeated ;) In fact, known hacks are available (even generic ones) for SafeDisc protected CDs.

Regards

KayJay

Inidan Developer in India
Sunday, February 29, 2004

odd, i thought the bar-code in the center of the disk was machine readable. just most drivers don't have a method to read it, the drive does.
old CD-Rs had increasing serial numbers on them. some new ones might too, but most are so cheap they barely hold data.
sounds like a pretty clever idea to me, though of course it will be hacked in the normal way. (e.g. if you have a function called "isCdOk" someone will replace the function with "return true")

mb
Sunday, February 29, 2004