Protect identical cloned machines and feature request.

[Bekos]

Hello Enigma,

Last week I faced a problem with enigma protector. I guess this problem exists among all the protection software that have the same functionality with enigma. Think of the following scenario:
I want to protect I piece of software that will be installed on the machines of a university laboratory. These machines have the exact same hardware and all their OS is installed from the same image. The only enigma protection lock I can use to protect my software on these machines is: Motherboard (is this the serial number of the motherboard?) lock, hard disk serial number lock.
Using motherboard lock, the enigma API returns a different value when I am an administrator, and a different value when I am a simple limited user. The same applies for the hard disk serial number. As a result,the software registers and runs fine under administrator mode, but when I try to run it as a simple user it asks me again to provide a key. And of course when I enter a valid name/key it says that they are invalid! From my understanding this happens because the low level system functions that are required to to retrieve the motherboard and hard disk serial numbers, require admin rights. Any idea how I can protect my software under these circumstances? I way would be to use the MAC address, which is always unique and the low level system function to retrieve it does not require administrator privileges. Unfortunately enigma does not support MAC address lock yet. Are you planning to add it in the near future? Thanks a lot! Again, thumbs up for the Enigma Protector.

Cheers,
Bekos

[Enigma]

Hi Bekos,

Specially for such cases there had been made Hardware Lock - User Name/Computer Name. Usually, in the set of company computers, at least User/Computer Name is different for all PCs. Only note there, that using User Name will change hardware id when switching between users.

Regarding Motherboard hardware lock. It is changing only on the Windows XP/200o if you switch between admin/non admin user. On the Vista and Seven it should return same result for all users. But unfortunately, this does not mean this hardware lock works fine, it means vice versa, it does not work on Vista/Seven at all.
Motherboard hardware lock is mainly used for Windows 9x programs.

HDD Serial should not change when switching Windows users. There was some problem with it, when hwid really changed this case, but the problem had been solved in version 3.60. If you have noticed that it is changing anyway, please let me know, maybe do you have a chance to test this issue?

Regarding MAC, no plans. To my mind it is very unstable hardware lock. Last years there are appeared lot programs that allows to emulate LAN physical device. For example, on one of our test computers there are about 10 different MAC addresses of real + virtual connections. There is no way to determine what correction is real, what virtual. Moreover, if user has more than a one LAN device, then how protection should determine to what MAC the hwid should be assigned?
MAC address also can be changed easy enough, so I'm not sure it would be useful.

[Bekos]

Hello Enigma,

Thanks for your reply. Regarding MAC address lock, you are indeed right. It seems unstable.
I have a problem with the hard disk serial number lock though. My application contains no Enigma code at all. Everything is done through the Enigma Protector interface/project. I use the default registration dialog box. I just enable Hard Disk serial number protection and I protect my exe. When I am Administrator I get the Hardware ID generated from the Default registration dialog box and I put it in the Key Generator application. Then I click the 'Check hardware Id' button and for the HDD S/N I get a particular value. If I repeat the same process as a Simple Limited User this value is always '0000'. Attention: This happens under WindowsXP. Unfortunately, I can not test the same for Windows 7 right now, because I do not have Admin access on a Windows7 machine at work. I have attached my project file just in case you want to have a look. Thanks a lot for your time.

Cheers,
Bekos

EDIT: Hmm... looks like the attachment did not work.. here is a link with project's XML:
http://pastebin.com/Ac56F50q

[Enigma]

Hi Bekos,

Sorry, can't tell you why there is such difference.

Can you please test this issue using our Hardware ID Tester: http://forum.enigmaprotector.com/viewto ... f=26&t=870

Just run this tool under admin and limited accounts and post the results here.

Thanks!

[Bekos]

Hello Enigma,

Thanks for your reply! I used the Hardware Test x86 tool from an Admin account but also from Limited accounts.

This is the output I get when I run the application using an Admin account:
http://pastebin.com/txzr6hqF

And this is what I get when I run the application using a Limited Account:
http://pastebin.com/j91kLkaq

If you do a diff between the two you will notice that the following are different:
Motherboard, Motherboard Hash, Device Handle, HDD Serial Method 4, and of course the user info (which is expected to be different). You will also notice that HDD Serial Hash is missing completely from the Limited user output.
Thanks a lot for your time!

EDIT: Just to mention again that the OS is Windows XP SP3 x86

Cheers,
Bekos

[Enigma]

Bekos, let's move our discussion in the private. I have sent you some test files in PM, please check it.

I assume this problem can't be solved due to disk specific and software virtualization that exists in the Windows XP under limited account.