Question on software protection
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A friend of mine is an economist whose main work is Economic Analysis . A while back he developed a software actually a kind of a table that works in Microsoft Excel application environment . He sells this
application together with a user guide, to other companies that are in the same line of work. Since we are a small country and this is a really specialized area he sells this application more in hundreds than in thousands. Now he is upgrading this application updating it to new laws and regulations and soon the new version will be out to market.
He wants to create an installation procedure in which he can protect his software to prevent unauthorized copying and distribution. What he wants to know is what are the possibilities and what does it cost to do this.
He talked to a couple of local companies but he left with a feeling that they either don’t know their work or that they are blackmailing him into much more unnecessary work. Since he hasn’t got so much knowledge on the topic I said I will ask around .Any suggestions? Anyone in this line of work?
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Mattheo,
If the application is developed with Excel macros/vba he will have little protection. Ideally what he needs to do is to place the sensitive functionality of his application in an external .dll (dynamic link library) that is obfuscated (the code is mangled by a special program so that it becomes difficult for a skilled programmer to read / reverse engineer the code). Furthermore the .dll needs to be protected against decompilation. Depending on which computer language is used to compile the .dll there are various applications that can obfuscate, encrypt and protect a compiled application or .dll. (Some very expensive, others quite resonable.)
Some of these applications also offer license key support which will guard against multiple unauthorised installations.
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Thanks for the information. I will look into it.
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