Anyone ever tryed to reverse the protection system in SAS?.
(It's an statistics tool, version 6.12, isnt the latest).

The entire system is distributed in about 300 dll's.
Its really hard coz i guess it decrypts each one of the dll's with the license file.


Any info appreciated. Greets.

I looked at Sas very briefly when I ran across a copy with an expired license a couple of months ago. I found plain-text license files for it on the web, but they didn't help. The license-verification system appears to be pretty complicated. Filemon indicated that, as you say, lots of files seem to be involved.

I was told that there is no valid license file for Sas versions that are expired. People whose copies expire have to buy a whole new version of the program, not just a new license file. I don't know for sure if that's true (the Sas web site probably says something about it), but if it is, then you'd probably have to patch it to get it to run.

I gave up because it looked like too much work, and the big prize if you succeed is that you get to write ugly old Sas programs.

After a very detailed investigation, it seems that the dll involved in all the license check is SASXINI.DLL.
I was able to make it run, but very forced. (some options dont works).

The current SAS version is 8.2 (after 7.0, 8.0, 8.1). 6.12 is an old release but the protection is quite similar. The protection is based on several information the user must give: the site number (given by SAS Instititue), the modules you bought (there is a lot of them; the 'base' is required), and the expiration date (internally, SAS uses the number of days between the date and jan/01/1960). All the information is used to calculate the 'setinit', a number. When all the information (including the correct setinit) is submitted to the SAS system, the licence is updated and one can use SAS till the expiration date. After the expiration date, it's posible to use SAs during the next 90 days and after that... bye, bye! The protection does not reside on only one DLL as said.

I was able to reverse all the protection, (i guess).
It was all in Sabxinit.dll. (U can patch it and it run flawlessly).
I have version 6.12. Which version u investigated?.
Im planning to get v 8.1 to reverse.


Greets.

You can patch the DLL, but the options (the modules permitted to be used - about 20) are set in another location. I think you will not be able to make them work (all of them!). SAS works with DLL's and 'catalogs' (in version 6.12, they had the extension *.sc2). The current version is 8.2.