Bad Header Protection

SoftwareShield System Feature Guide > IronWrapping > IronWrap Protection > Bad-Header Protection

## Bad-Header Protection

Bad-Header Protection is a protection mechanism designed to make cracking your programs extremely difficult.

All Win32 executables contain a structure called the PE Header. The PE Header contains a number of sections that tell the operating system how to map the file into memory and many other details about the executable.

If you choose to use Bad-Header Protection virtually all of this information is either stripped, filled with garbage, or filled with misinformation. The IronWrap system then virtualizes access to the PE header for any needs it deems legitimate. Further, this virtualization makes dumping the memory of the program useless because the PE header would have to be manually reconstructed.

Note that Bad-Header Protection is not compatible with Code-Signing. Code-Signing uses sections of the PE Header which cannot be effectively virtualized.

### More Information

For more information about actually setting Bad-Header Protection in your License Project, see: IronWrap Protection Tab