How to prevent a program from being copied, using Delphi

Question

I would like to know, let say I develop a program, have access to the clients computer, is there no way to develop the program so that is can only run on that machine, by writing in the computers unique identifier (if there is something like that) into the code and compiling the program. I'm using Delphi XE2

Answer 1

If you want something simple this will give you the hard disk volume ID as a number which should be unique to each machine bar hacking.

function GetHDSerialNumber: Dword;
var dw:DWord; mc, fl : dword; c:string;
begin
  c:=extractfiledrive(application.exename)+'\';
  GetVolumeInformation(Pchar(c),nil,0,@dw,mc,fl,nil,0);
  Result := dw;
end;

This works up to Delphi 2007, versions above that are unicode, you're on yer own with that problem.

Answer 2

Yes, you can prevent some degree of unauthorized use by binding your executable to machine characteristics. You can do it yourself (problematic) or you can buy an off-the-shelf solution to do it for you (disclaimer--I work for one of the companies that produce solutions for these kinds of problems: Wibu-Systems). There are two problems with machine binding; we can help with one of them:

1. False positives: Machine characteristics can change due to user upgrades or weird driver behavior. That can cause your licensing system to report that the user is trying to abuse the license (a false positive). This is an endemic problem in these systems. (Shameless self-promotion: we have just released a new method of binding to reduce or eliminate these kinds of errors. We call it SmartBind(tm).

2. Crackability: Because any machine binding has to use OS calls to get hardware "fingerprint" info back for validation, a cracker can patch the dlls used to always return known "good" values, allowing for cracked software. These kinds of cracks are rampant on bittorrent sites. Unfortunately there is no great way around it, although our approach uses some crypto mojo to make it harder to do. For the ultimate in anti-piracy, you have to use a crypto device like a CmStick, HASP, or KeyLok. NSA can crack anything, of course, but the degree of difficulty of cracking a top-notch hardware-based solution like CodeMeter makes it unlikely unless the payoff is truly gigantic.

What I strongly suggest is that you look into commercial solutions to carefully study the available options. There are a number of vendors in this space and several good products to choose from (of course, I think our product is the best). Rolling your own solution will cause you lots of grief downstream as you try to deal with various configuration issues and potentially unhappy users.

Answer 3

The short answer is that there is no reliable way to prevent copying a program. Certainly there are techniques for identifying particular instances of the program, identifying machine hardware, etc, but for every one of those techniques, there is a countering technique to bypass it for users who really want to go to the trouble. Whether that is to hack your program and change what it looks for (or disable the checks altogether), to virtualize the hardware you are looking for, etc. There is always a way. It is just a matter of time and effort that someone is willing to put in.

Answer 4

While there is no such thing as hack-proof hardware the Wibu system mentioned has not been hacked yet, and it has strong anti-hack features including physical design features that make the most sophisticated hacking all but impossible.

Other solutions like i-Lock have been hacked, but so far Wibu is a good answer. I just bought their starter pack.