Just wondering how many of you have "played" with software protected by home made DIY dongles that use the serial/parallel port?

Interested in what some people without millions of pounds to spend on custom RISC technology have come up with.

The only home made dongle protected programs I've played around with have been either incredibly simple, or incredibly stupid. The last one used a variation of SHA-1, and worked by passing data to the dongle, and then checked the result by using the exact same algorithm in the main program (which was called immediatly after collecting the result back from the dongle!).

All parrallel port dongles typically need 2 things:
A Clock Signal and a Data Line.

If you can obscure how the data is being clocked in it can make things somewhat confusing.

In some cases single wire is used, such as the dallas buttons.

Single wire can be extremely timing sensitive.

The micro processor idea can be reversed quite simply by glitching the code out of the micro, giving the reverser a complete disassembly.

Gate array logic typically consumes too much power.

Descrete logic far to bulky.

ASIC can be cost ineffective.

Leaving the typical 1, 2, or 3 wire memory devices, which can be easily defeated, and/or duplicated.

Not sure that this tells you much.
It may help!?!

Regards,

tgodd

>The micro processor idea can be reversed quite simply by
>glitching the code out of the micro, giving the reverser a
>complete disassembly

Simply by glitchin the code not allways is so simple,
somtimes a some freezing/cooking is necessary,
somtimes it's simply impossible!

Question about latest USB HASP and Sentinel dongles.
What micro is used (CY7C63101A from Cypress??)?

Neviens.