This invention concerns the technical domain of data processing systems in the general sense, and is more precisely aimed at the means of protecting software running on said data processing systems against unauthorized usage.
The subject of the invention aims in particular at the means of protecting software against unauthorized usage, using a processing and memorizing unit, such a unit being commonly materialized by a chip card or a material key on USB port.
In the technical domain above, the main problem concerns the unauthorized usage of software by users who have not paid the license rights. This illicit use of software causes an obvious loss for software editors, software distributors and/or any person integrating such software in products. To avoid such illicit copies, various solutions, in the state of technology, have been proposed to protect software.
Thus, a protection solution is known, which makes use of a hardware protection system, such as a physical component named protection key or “dongle”. Such a protection key should guarantee that the software executes only in presence of the key. Yet, it must be acknowledged that this solution is ineffective because it presents the inconvenience of being easy to bypass. An ill-intentioned person or a hacker can, with the aid of specialized tools such as disassemblers, delete the control instructions of the protection key. It becomes then possible to make illicit copies corresponding to modified versions of the software able to run without the protection. Moreover, this solution cannot be generalized to all software, inasmuch as it is difficult to connect more than two protection keys to the same system.