A model for prevention of software piracy through secure distribution

Abstract

Although many anti-piracy methods are prevalent today in the software market, still software piracy is constantly on the rise. The cause of this can be attributed to (a) either these methods are very expensive to be implemented (b) or are easy to be defeated (c) or are simply not very convenient to use. Anti-piracy methods usually consist of lock-and-key policy where the software to be protected is locked using some encryption method (lock) and this lock requires a key to be unlocked. The key is called as registration code and the mechanism is called as registration mechanism in the software parlance. The registration mechanism may be implemented in many ways- software, hardware, or a combination of both. The way it is implemented makes the protection scheme more vulnerable or less vulnerable to piracy. The method of implementation also affects the user convenience to use the software. Some mechanisms are very convenient to the user but are more vulnerable to piracy. Some others are least vulnerable to piracy but are very inconvenient to the user. Different vendors choose different ways to implement the lock and unlock mechanism to make it as hard as possible to pirate their software. In this paper, we discuss several anti-piracy methods, the security issues related to them, and present a model which allows prevention of software piracy through a secure mechanism for software distribution. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.