Actually they offer just software protection, but I need the additional
features to assist with marketing.

hhtest <hhtest@optushome.com.au> wrote:
> Have you looked at securewrap?  www.securewrap.net

Hmm... Market Intelligence, Real-time Customer Management and Self-managed
Feature Control. You need all *that* to do copy protection ?

Have you looked at securewrap?  www.securewrap.net

  You cant make profits from s/w unless you have
friends in Congress like Bill Gates has ....

  Best just get on with hardware and dont worry
 about it .


 Ill be giving a free Forthrite OpSys for ARM9 ........
 It needs no U-Bloat nor Linux nor manuals nor English text
  its the first True GUI ....
  ARM from Atmel has the best Docs ive ever seen , making
 it simple and fast to develope . Atmel has exactly the right
 hardware info to get you started on any EVB .

Dennis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm creating software for a new machine that runs on a Windows XP-embedded
> PC with a I/O card and motor controller card. I need to protect the software
> from reverse engineering and copiing. The protection needs to be very solid.
> What would be a good method to do so? The costprice of the protection is not
> realy an issue, so protection via software and hardware is an option.

Using hardware certainly will help

> A good  protection is perhaps when the PC is opened the harddisk will destroy
> itself?

That's actually very hard to do - see the USA Spy plane that
force-landed in china
as an example.
They are now looking at giant rare earth magents that physically swing
over the
hard drive, and wipe them that way : old-fashioned magentic brute
force.
I did not see mention of how they would shield the magent, so it did
not slowly
wipe the hard drive in the 'retract' position...

Your cost price/risk is rather under the US military budget, so you
might
consider something less out in left field (sic).

> On the other hand is the time to implement it a big constraint.
> There is much to do with only few people so if we could buy protection
> software and/or hardware than I would prefer that.  Any good advise on this?
> Some context:
> The number of products is about 100 per year.
> Costprice per product > 100,000.- Euro.
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Dennis.

You need to define what exactly you are protecting against.
Since you presumably sell a PC+HW+Expertise+Support+Updates,
and you include a reasonable amount of HW, then look at the attack
motivations, and protect against those.
eg Does it matter if they copy the PC SW, if they lack the HW ?

Do you need anti-clone or anti-creep protection on the products
[sell & support a couple, but customer has dozens cloned...]

With  modern Flash uC, FPGA and CPLD there are plenty of places you can
serialise and key your systems, and the best security will be many
small
keys, rather than a single attack point (like a dongle).
Some FPGAs have RAM based encryption streams, that makes
them very hard to attack/clone.

You only really need to go up to the cost of reverse engineering the
product
( ie copy, with probably improvements, the functions )

Always remember that keying should never penalise the legitimate user,
or you will shoot yourself in the foot.

-jg

On Sun, 07 Jan 2007 11:04:55 +0000, "Paul E. Bennett"
<peb@amleth.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>Dennis wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I'm creating software for a new machine that runs on a Windows XP-embedded
>> PC with a I/O card and motor controller card. I need to protect the
>> software from reverse engineering and copiing. The protection needs to be
>> very solid. What would be a good method to do so? The costprice of the
>> protection is not realy an issue, so protection via software and hardware
>> is an option. A good protection is perhaps when the PC is opened the
>> harddisk will destroy itself? On the other hand is the time to implement
>> it a big constraint. There is much to do with only few people so if we
>> could buy protection
>> software and/or hardware than I would prefer that.  Any good advise on
>> this? Some context:
>> The number of products is about 100 per year.
>> Costprice per product > 100,000.- Euro.
>> 
>> Thanks in advance,
>> Dennis.
>
>Stop and think a bit about what you are doing here.
>
>Are you sure you want to use an PC with XP on this type of project. You are
>controlling a mechanical device (the motor) which may have the potential to
>do a great deal of harm if your system got to a state where it couldn't be
>shut off quickly. 

Any system that needs to be shut off quickly should have a large
number of those big red emergency STOP switches distributed all over
the place, that will simply cut the power to the control electronics
in case of an emergency, possibly activating some spring loaded
breaks.

>Perhaps you might consider constructing a proper embedded system (from SBC
>based modules), with the hardware fully tailored to perform the tasks
>required. Ditch any idea of running XP or maybe you do not really need an
>operating system at all. Then you will have a mix of hardware and software
>to be able to fulfill the customers requirements and they will come back
>when they need more such systems.

XP Embedded is a usable platform for running the user interface for a
control system, but is it an appropriate platform for the actual motor
control is an other question.

The question of data security, copy protection etc. should not be
addressed as some kind of a late add-on feature, but these things
should be part of the initial product design.

With the OP's requirements, I would design a system, with the actual
control logic using some dedicated card, running some possibly
in-house OS, while the user interface would be running perhaps XP
Embedded. 

It would not be a pity, if someone copied the user interface, since
the system would not work without the specific hardware. In fact it
might be a good idea to distribute the user interface as a demo
product for potential customers. 

No matter how wildly the user interface is cloned, the actual product
bringing the revenues would be hard to clone, especially, when the
number of potential users are that low, since with such low number of
potential customers no-one would do it.

Apparently nobody noticed the sarcasm in my previous post :-).

Paul
 

Dennis wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm creating software for a new machine that runs on a Windows XP-embedded
> PC with a I/O card and motor controller card. I need to protect the
> software from reverse engineering and copiing. The protection needs to be
> very solid. What would be a good method to do so? The costprice of the
> protection is not realy an issue, so protection via software and hardware
> is an option. A good protection is perhaps when the PC is opened the
> harddisk will destroy itself? On the other hand is the time to implement
> it a big constraint. There is much to do with only few people so if we
> could buy protection
> software and/or hardware than I would prefer that.  Any good advise on
> this? Some context:
> The number of products is about 100 per year.
> Costprice per product > 100,000.- Euro.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Dennis.

Stop and think a bit about what you are doing here.

Are you sure you want to use an PC with XP on this type of project. You are
controlling a mechanical device (the motor) which may have the potential to
do a great deal of harm if your system got to a state where it couldn't be
shut off quickly. If this is for a small motor with very little torque
available then it might be OK.

Perhaps you might consider constructing a proper embedded system (from SBC
based modules), with the hardware fully tailored to perform the tasks
required. Ditch any idea of running XP or maybe you do not really need an
operating system at all. Then you will have a mix of hardware and software
to be able to fulfill the customers requirements and they will come back
when they need more such systems.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett ....................<email://peb@amleth.demon.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

On Sat, 6 Jan 2007 15:40:36 +0100, "Dennis" <niet_spammen@aub.nl>
wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I'm creating software for a new machine that runs on a Windows XP-embedded 
>PC with a I/O card and motor controller card. I need to protect the software 
>from reverse engineering and copiing. The protection needs to be very solid. 
>What would be a good method to do so? The costprice of the protection is not 
>realy an issue, so protection via software and hardware is an option. A good 
>protection is perhaps when the PC is opened the harddisk will destroy 
>itself? On the other hand is the time to implement it a big constraint. 
>There is much to do with only few people so if we could buy protection 
>software and/or hardware than I would prefer that.  Any good advise on this?
>Some context:
>The number of products is about 100 per year.
>Costprice per product > 100,000.- Euro.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>Dennis. 
>

Dongle?

John

Dennis wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I'm creating software for a new machine that runs on a Windows XP-embedded 
> PC with a I/O card and motor controller card. I need to protect the software 
> from reverse engineering and copiing. The protection needs to be very solid. 
> What would be a good method to do so? The costprice of the protection is not 
> realy an issue, so protection via software and hardware is an option. A good 
> protection is perhaps when the PC is opened the harddisk will destroy 
> itself? On the other hand is the time to implement it a big constraint. 
> There is much to do with only few people so if we could buy protection 
> software and/or hardware than I would prefer that.  Any good advise on this?
> Some context:
> The number of products is about 100 per year.
> Costprice per product > 100,000.- Euro.


There is no way to solve the non-technical problem by the technical 
means. If your software/hardware is really worth protection, you should 
protect it legally.

Vladimir Vassilevsky

DSP and Mixed Signal Design Consultant

http://www.abvolt.com

"Blair P. Houghton" wrote:
> 
> Put in the license that it is not permitted to copy or
> reverse-engineer the software.
> 
> Anyone paying $100k for a box will pay attention to the fine print.
... snip ...

This is the best answer to the problem,  But it will be
incomprehensible to many, due to the lack of quoting.  See below:

-- 
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