Re: vmWare, virtualPC, dedect , ... IN/OUT

From: Chuck Chopp (ChuckChopp_at_rtfmcsi.com)
Date: 07/28/04 

Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 10:07:00 -0400

Mario Semo wrote:
> Hello,
>
>>Although it is possible to clone a single VM such that the copy of it even
>>has the same MAC address on its NIC and the copy of Windows on it keeps
>
> the
>
>>same system SID, the usefulness of the clone would be very low except as a
>>standby system. Concurrent usage of both virtual machines would be
>
> limited
>
>>to non-networked situations if they have duplicate MAC addresses.
>
>
> exactly thats problem. look at standalone Laptops to controll and change
> parameters etc in the chips in the engine of modern cars.
> The engineers plug in a laptop (without NW access) via parallel cable to the
> car.
> They can use vmWare with a single protected copy of the software on 100
> laptops...
> We do NOT develop car engine control sw, but the problem is the same.
>
>
>>Even devices like USB dongles used for license enforcement aren't shared
>>across multiple virtual machines. When the dongle get plugged into a USB
>>port, the device either gets controlled by the host's O.S. itself or one
>>single VM is allowed to "see" the dongle as a USB device and thus make use
>>of it. The same goes for COM ports, named pipes, FireWire devices,
>
> etc....
>
> exactly. you can use our SW with Hardware protection like parallel port or
> USB dongles and then we do not have problems when you use it inside vmWare.
> (you can even use a server dongle with N licences activated and use the SW
> concurrently at any N Workstations (incl. virtual workstations) at any time.
> if you use N vmWare sessions on one physical machine, noone else can use the
> product.
>
> But if you prefer a not hardware base protection we do not allow vmWare
> session due to the possibility of 100% identical configurations.
>
> greetings from vienna,
> mario.

Given that you have to pay $200 USD for a VMware license, I would find it
odd that a corporation would spend the money on acquiring & deploying VMware
workstation, as well as buying extra O.S. licenses for it soley for the
purpose of cloning the VMs to run pirated copies of software on. That just
seems to be a highly unlikely scenario.

You could take 10 identical laptops and Ghost the same hard drive image onto
them so they had the same name, same system SID value and even have the MAC
address configured through software so that they would be identical. In
that situation your software would be just as easily fooled into running on
more machines than it was intended to run on.

What price does your software retail at in US dollars? How does that
compare with the prices of competing products? Is it higher or lower? If
it is higher, does your product provide sufficiently superior features &
functionality to warrant the difference in price? I'm digging here to see
if the price of your software is so exhorbitantly high that the cost of
deploying VMware Workstation or VirtualPC on laptops would even be cost
effective in circumventing the licensing of your software.

Using software techniques to enforce a product license will always be
something that is less than 100% reliable, engenders ill will in the
customer base when it presents a roadblock for legitimate use of the
software and is expense for the software producer to research, developer,
implement and test. Hardware product keys like USB and parallel port
dongles are the only 100% effective way to tie your software to being used
on one single system at any given time.

The I/O port and magic number values used in VMware and VirtualPC could
easily be turned into a configurable parameter. I would expect that if
software vendors chose to unfairly limit their software to not run on
virtual machines then the vendors of virtual machine software would see fit
to go ahead and make such a change in their products. That would
immediately void your software's ability to detect virtual machine hardware
via that method. Even the identification in the system BIOS of a virtual
machine can be altered, so testing the BIOS name isn't even 100% reliable.

Again, the best copy protection method you can implement today is to use USB
or parallel port dongles. Anything less than that is flawed by design and
will have a higher long term cost than a hardware based product key solution. 

-- 
Chuck Chopp
ChuckChopp (at) rtfmcsi (dot) com http://www.rtfmcsi.com
RTFM Consulting Services Inc.     864 801 2795 voice & voicemail
103 Autumn Hill Road              864 801 2774 fax
Greer, SC  29651
Do not send me unsolicited commercial email.

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