How to get software to bind computer hardware

Software-bound Computer hardware identification is an anti-copy method used by many software. However, it is not a simple matter how to determine the unique identity of the computer hardware. The following are commonly used methods and their pros and cons.

1 Method of computer uniqueness Identification 1.1 CPU serial number availability

The existing CPUs almost all support CPUID instructions. This instruction not only can obtain basic information such as CPU manufacturer, but also can obtain other hardware information about CPU, including CPU serial number.

The first thing to note is that the CPU lot and CPU serial number are different things, the same model of the CPU has the same batch number, and the CPU serial numbers can be said to be basically unique.

Unfortunately, however, not all CPUs support the CPU serial number. Once this is a political issue, users are kept confidential, do not want the CPU manufacturers to use serial numbers to identify their purchased CPU. Intel's official documentation also says that even if its CPU supports the CPU serial number, it does not guarantee its uniqueness, and the user can disable the serial number function in the BIOS.

Security

Virtual machines such as VMware can easily change the CPU serial number of the VM.

Usage recommendations

It is not recommended.

1.2 Network card Mac availability

The network card MAC is an address number with international standards that ensures that every NIC in the world has a unique serial number.
The problem is that although most machines now inherit the NIC, some of the machines do not have the NIC installed. And some machines also have multiple network cards installed, which requires more judgment.

Security

Virtual network card software has long been, for the virtual network card, its MAC address can be arbitrarily modified.

Usage recommendations

Networked machines can try to use.

1.3 HDD Serial number availability

In addition to some special hard drives, most hard drives have their own unique hardware serial number and cannot be modified.
However, the hard disk is not as stable as the integrated network card and CPU, and the behavior of the user changing the hard disk will occur sometimes. There are also cases where multiple hard disks coexist.
Also, for users using RAID, the hard drive serial number does not exist.

Security

For virtual machines, there is no security.

Usage recommendations

So so.

1.4 HDD Partition serial number availability

First of all, the hard disk partition serial number and the hard disk physical serial number are different things. The hard disk physical serial number is specified by the disk manufacturer, and the partition serial number is specified by the partition software. This serial number will change each time you repartition.

For GPT hard disk partitions, each partition is identified using the world's only UUID, with good uniqueness and availability.

In addition, for RAID devices, the partition serial number is also present and available.

Security

Since this serial number is specified by the partition software, there is no security.

Usage recommendations

can be used.

2 Algorithms for binding hardware

Once the hardware is uniquely identified , what needs to be done is to have the software dynamically acquire the identity at runtime and then compare it to the authorization code .

How to generate the authorization code according to the hardware unique identity is the whole of the binding algorithm. The simplest way is to directly identify the hardware as the authorization code . However, this is very insecure, and software users can easily muddle through by modifying the unique identity of the hardware.

So the general method is: Authorization code =f (Hardware unique identification). The f algorithm is confidential, so that even if the user sees the authorization code, it is still not possible to modify the unique identity of the hardware only through the authorization code.

However, the user can still replicate the software by copying the hardware identification and Authorization code of the machine that has already been authorized.
Therefore, the identification of the hardware needs to be confidential to the user, after all, it is very difficult to fully replicate all the hardware serial number of a machine.

Copyright NOTICE: This article for Bo Master original article, without Bo Master permission not reproduced.

How to get software to bind computer hardware