NYCPHP Meetup

[Daniel Kushner]

Warning: I work for Zend Technologies !


The Zend SafeGuard Suite includes the Encoder and licensing software
all-in-one.

http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-safeguard-suite.php

Zend enjoys giving New York PHP discounts. You can contact me off list if
you're interested ;)

Best,
Daniel Kushner


> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org 
> [mailto:talk-bounces at lists.nyphp.org] On Behalf Of Dan Cech
> Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2004 13:06
> To: NYPHP Talk
> Subject: [nycphp-talk] PHP License Management
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I've been asked to come up with a licensing solutions for a 
> closed-source php application, and wondered if anyone had any advice.
> 
> The application will be licensed either in perpetuity or on a 
> subscription basis, and each license will be tied to a 
> particular server to make unauthorised distribution more difficult.
> 
> The idea I came up with was to create a server app where the 
> user could log in and view/purchase/extend licenses and 
> manage the IP address(es) each license is tied to.
> 
> The 'license' itself would be an encrypted token containing 
> the client id, expiry date, ip address(es) etc signed with a 
> private key.
> 
> The actual software would then be encoded to protect the source from
> (casual) prying eyes (I was thinking of using the Turck 
> MMCache encoder for this) and include code to check the 
> license validity and take appropriate action.
> 
> The most obvious (to me) attack on the system is to 
> reverse-engineer the code and remove the license check, which 
> could be mitigated somewhat be encoding the entire app and 
> 'hiding' the check within the code.
> 
> It seems to me like a viable solution, but I'm no security 
> expert and would appreciate any and all comments or pointers 
> to existing solutions.
> 
> Dan
> 
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