Run Dongle Protected Software Without Dongle
Free Bluetooth Dongle Software
A software protection dongle (commonly known as a dongle or key) is an electronic copy protection and content protection device which, when attached to a computer or other electronic appliance, unlocks software functionality or decodes content. The hardware key is programmed with a product key or other cryptographic protection mechanism; it attaches via electrical connector to an external bus of the computer or appliance. When used as a software protection device, dongles mostly appear as two-interface security tokens with transient data flow that does not interfere with other dongle functions and a pull communication that reads security data from the dongle. Without the dongle, the software may run only in a restricted mode, or not at all.
When used as a device attached to a computer or TV or gaming console, dongles can enable functions that would not be present without it. For example, a dongle attached to a TV may receive an encoded video stream, decode it in the dongle, and then present this audio and video information to the TV.
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Clearly Peter has addressed the main points of proper implementation. Given that I have - without publishing the results - 'cracked' two different dongle systems in the past, I'd like to share my insights as well.
User276 already hints, in part, at what the problem is. Many software vendors think that they purchase some kind of security for their licensing model when licensing a dongle system. They couldn't be further from the truth. All they do is to get the tools that allow them to implement a relatively secure system (within the boundaries pointed out in Peters answer). What is the problem with copy protection in general?
The software is “bound” to the dongle and could not fully function without. Dongle is missing, the protected software. Software Protection. Using software from the machine without dongle. How to Run Programs without Admin Rights. USB Dongle Protection for Software - Duration.
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If a software uses mathematically sound encryption for its licensing scheme this has no bearing on the security of the copy protection as such. Well, you end up in a catch 22 situation. You don't trust the user (because the user could copy the software), so you encrypt stuff or use encryption somehow in your copy protection scheme. Alas, you need to have your private key in the product to use the encryption, which completely contradicts the notion of mistrusting the user. Dongles try to put the private key (and/or algorithm and/or other ingredients) into hardware such that the user has no access in the first place. However, since many vendors are under the impression that they purchase security out of the box, they don't put effort into the correct implementation. Which brings me to the first example.
It's a CAD program my mother was using. Download mario and sonic at the london 2012 olympic games wii iso. Out of the knowledge that dongles connecting to LPT tend to fail more often than their more recent USB counterparts, I set out to 'work around' this one.
That was around 2005. It didn't take me too long. In fact I used a simple DLL placement attack (the name under which the scenario later became known) to inject my code. And that code wasn't all too elaborate. Only one particular function returned the value the dongle would usually read out (serial number), and that was it. The rest of the functions I would pass through to the original DLL which the dongle vendor requires to be installed along with the driver.
What Is A Dongle Driver
The other dongle was a little before that. The problem here was that I was working for a subcontractor and we had limited access only to the software for which we were supposed to develop. It truly was a matter of bureaucracy between the company that licensed the software and the software vendor, but it caused major troubles for us. In this case it was a little more challenging to work around the dongle. First of all a driver had to be written to sniff the IRPs from and to the device.