AutoHotkey Community

[Francis]

Please be nice to me. First Post
I've spent a few days reading and playing and have come up with , what I hope is a 5 day trial limiter.

First !!
I fully understand that no software protection is faultless, that anything relying on registry entries or ini files etc can be hacked. Turning back the time on the PC, leaving it running, deleting the files etc..

But I'm hoping this will offer a bit of protection against a casual pirate, as others have pointed out if the application is any good, people will register it !

Please don't flame me or criticise just for the sake of it. If this is coded wrong, please explain how to improve and amend it.

OK, the idea !!
When the script is first run, create a new ini file, that is hidden, has it's date changed to look like it been there for a while and add today's A_YDAY to it.

Instead of just writing A_YDAY, multiple this by a figure specified in the script.. (just to make it look a bit more obscure)

Then do the same with a registry entry. Write it to an area that is not the application name, and again obscure A_YDAY by multiplying it by another number.

Each time the script is run compare both the ini & the registry entries. Works out the correct A_YDAY by dividing the numbers back

If reg entry is not like ini entry then something is wrong and exit !

If upto this point all is OK, then work out the difference between the stored A_YDAY and Today.

Report back to the user you have x days left.

If the 5 day period has expired warn the user and exitapp.

If the user changes there clock, re write the ini file with an obscure amount so ini & reg will never match.. rendering the app useless.

That's the basic idea

I've got this far by reading on the forum, trying code, deleting and rebooting and so on. Thanks to everyone else who has posted code that I've used. (I only found some of it yesterday.. so not tested this fully)


So here is some code... But please be nice

[Laszlo]

Cool!

The difficulty is to catch the user setting the system time back, in the BIOS, that is, before Windows or any AHK script has a chance to prevent it. You can look for special Windows system file, like "c:\Windows\WindowsUpdate.log" in Windows 7. If its date or one of the logged entries in it point to the future, we know something has changed with the time. Be careful with daylight saving!

You can also look at the registry: some keys could contain the time and date of a few recent logged events, or make a snapshot at each run of your script of the directory "c:\Windows\System32\LogFiles\Scm". If you find any date in the future, you caught the user changing system time.

[Francis]

Laszlo - Thank You.

Cool is better than I thought I'd get

Any comments or suggestions on the code would be great.

[Francis]

Hi
anyone else got any comments about this ?

Will it work ? Is it a good way to do it ?

Any suggestions ! ?

Thanks

[Carcophan]

I have been reviewing the code. I like the idea a lot. It is basic but still complex enough to get past the 'casual' pirate.

[Francis]

Hi

Thanks for the comments. As you've mentioned I've kept it simple, to deter the casual hacker, I'm sure some one determined would sort it !!

There is no delete function in the script, the idea being the registry and ini entries will still be inplace, rendering the app useless if reinstalled.

I have thought of added a 'run, http://mysite.com/buyme.html' after the expired message, so the user is told the program is expired and then presented with a 'Buy Me' page !!

One concern I have after re reading another thread is the sleep feature, which would be used to reload the script every evening. With out this feature I can't see how we check the day of usage..

Reloading each night would sort that.. but is this the best way ??

[Francis]

No other comments about this ?
Any advise on the timing ?

Thanks

[Francis]

Quick update

Timed reload seems to be working fine on a locked workstation.

[doyle]

How about getting the script to submit its CPU ID, and a timestamp to an online database when it is loaded?

Then check each time it is reloaded to see is an entry exists.

That way if the user resets their clock, it wont make any difference as the check would run off the server time.

If your script is worth it, then going down a route like this seems best.

[Francis]

[jpjazzy]

Seems like a good idea, I actually implemented a kind of fake "Key" in one of my programs just to fool people who were not real tech savy. It only takes one key and not a special key per person but I think this would go nicely with your time trial. I do have one question. How would someone go about getting the time trial to be released if they did actually buy it?

My key:

[Francis]

[jpjazzy]

I did a little bit of editing at work to throw this together and make it look somewhat working. This is untested. The key is "GLZYY983YIIE5U8EWFKX3IQYZ". Key destination is where ever you specify in the beginning. Hopefully something like this will work. Making two programs would render this useless because if someone bought it then gave it to someone else, bam... your programming becomes obsolete and the key is no longer needed.

Here is my code

[JoMa]

This seems to be a great idea.

Has anyone actually tried linking it with SW Protect ?
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic5763.html

That way you get xx day trial, followed by regsitration.

@jpjazzy - is that something you could do ?

@Laszlo & Icarus
Any chance ???

[Francis]