Re: How secure are dongles for copy-protection?

From: shampsterat_private
Date: Tue Jun 05 2001 - 14:50:41 PDT

  • Next message: Ryan Permeh: "Re: How secure are dongles for copy-protection?"

    On Tue, 5 Jun 2001, Ryan Permeh wrote:
    > the only types of dongle protection that don't completely suck are those
    > that take information from the machine and perform a specific set of
    > operations on the dongle(prefereably a cryptographic operation, a hash or
    > crypte/decrypt) purely in hardware on the dongle.  This means that the
    > cracker either has to reverse the entire crypto algorithm(using black box
    > techniques like known plaintext attacks), including finding the keyed value
    > on the dongle, or use a hardware lab to actually reverse the hardware.
    
    . . . Not if all this trickery ends in a function returning a 0 for
    failure and a 1 for success . . .
    What does the software do with the hash
    once it's passed back to the application?  Compare it to a constant?
    Hopefully not. Use the returned value as a pointer to the next code
    segment? Better, but usually still not very difficult to break.
    
    To completely emulate the dongle, the cracker does have to reverse the dongle.
    But a cracker does not need to reverse the dongle to break the protection.
    
    [snip]
    
    >
    >
    > Signed,
    > Ryan Permeh
    > eEye Digital Security Team
    > http://www.eEye.com/Retina -Network Security Scanner
    > http://www.eEye.com/Iris -Network Traffic Analyzer
    >
    > ----- Original Message -----
    > From: "Felix Huber" <huberfelixat_private>
    > To: "Penetration Testers" <PEN-TESTat_private>
    > Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2001 4:05 AM
    > Subject: Re: How secure are dongles for copy-protection?
    >
    >
    > > Hi,
    > >
    > > of course - the most dongle checks were cracked. I have seen 3DSMax and
    > > other... For more information:
    > > http://www.google.com/search?q=3Ddongle+cracked
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > > Regards,
    > > Felix Huber
    > >
    > >
    > > -------------------------------------------------------
    > > Felix Huber, Web Application Programmer, Webtopia
    > > Guendlinger Str.2, 79241 Ihringen - Germany
    > > huberfelixat_private     (07668)  951 156 (phone)
    > > http://www.webtopia.de     (07668)  951 157 (fax)
    > >                                          (01792)  205 724 (mobile)
    > > -------------------------------------------------------
    > >   ----- Original Message -----=20
    > >   From: Harold Thimm=20
    > >   To: pen-testat_private=20
    > >   Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 9:43 PM
    > >   Subject: How secure are dongles for copy-protection?
    > >
    > >
    > >   I'm looking for any information on incorporating dongles into a =
    > > software package for copy protection. In particular, I'm looking for =
    > > information on the Rainbow Technologies Sentinel, but advice on =
    > > dongle-based copy protection in general is appreciated.
    > >
    > >   How easy/difficult is it to break this kind of copy-protection? Are =
    > > there any known weaknesses in the dongle-type systems themselves (as =
    > > opposed to implementation weaknesses?)=20
    > >
    > >   Are there any dongle-based protection schemes that have been cracked, =
    > > and if so, how?=20
    > >
    > >
    > >
    > >   (A pointer to a URL would be appreciated, if you have it.)
    > >
    > >   Thanks in advance.
    > >
    > >   HAL
    > >
    > >
    > >
    >
    
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    shampster / 3xT.org
    



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jun 05 2001 - 16:26:52 PDT