A Hardware-Based Software Protection Systems--Analysis of Security Dongles with Memory

Software piracy is the illegal reproduction and distribution of software applications, whether for business or personal use. Globally, businesses and consumers will spend $300 billion on PC software over the next four years, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates. Given the current market growth by country and current country-level piracy rates, during the same four-year period, we can expect almost $200 billion worth of PC software to be pirated. Protecting application against not authorized copying using program solutions is impossible. If there is a possibility to start program, there is also a possibility to crack it. Cracking means that application can be used without being registered or to the application there is a mechanism added which enables to obviate implemented there protections (for example: generator of serials codes). The device protection of software (dongles) has existed on the market for many years and it has functioned as devices protecting the software against not authorized copying and usage. For the application to work without device's key, the intruder has to modify it or emulate the presence of device's key. The dissertation presents tools and techniques used to break devices' protection of software with memory. The issue of software protection against not authorized copying, using devices' solutions is not a popular subject of scientific publications. The dissertations provides information about the applied methods and techniques of breaking the hypothetical construction of device's protection used the constructed electronic devices. The research is the introduction to designing the hardware protection of programmes resistant to well-known methods of breaking through safety of electronic devices' keys.

I. Introduction

According to the Business Software Alliance (BSA) Third Annual Global Software Piracy Study, thirty five percent of the software installed on personal computers worldwide was pirated in 2005 and losses increased by over $1.6 billion [1]. Fig. 1 shows the relative ranking by piracy rate of seven regions, which consist of 97 countries and six subregions as categorized by IDC. Six of these are mutually exclusive territories, the seventh — the European Union — includes countries in both Western and Central/Eastern Europe. The PC software piracy rate increased in four of the regions, including Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the European Union. Two regions saw a decrease in their piracy rate, Middle East/Africa and Central/Eastern Europe and North America stayed the same [1]. Figure 1. Piracy rate by region [1]