OpenEuphoria

RE: Copy Protection

• Posted by Rod Jackson <rodjackson_x at hotmail.com> Nov 19, 2001
• 555 views

Euman,

Here's a thought that may take a bit of effort, but may work reasonably 
well:

Locate one (or more) sector(s) physically on the disk. I.e., be able to 
point with a needle to the magnetic tape or reflective coating of the 
disk, and be able to say "Sector X is here."

Punch a hole through the disk at the appropriate sector(s).

Have the data on the disk be scattered about, and encrypted. The only 
clue to where the bad sectors are is contained, in a program that is 
also stored on the disk. Also, the only record of how the data is 
scattered, and of what the encryption key is, is stored in the program. 
You could even have these two data records (where the bad sectors are 
and how to render the data readable) be 'scrambled', to prevent a simple 
look at the program code from reading it. The program knows how to 
unscramble the records.

The only way to access the information now (without considerable effort) 
is via the on-disk program. When run, this program 'unscrambles' the 
bad-sector info if necessary, and checks to see that the punched-out 
sectors can be neither read from or written to. If the program finds 
that the sectors are indeed bad, 'unscramble' the data info if 
necessary, then reconstruct and decrypt the data. Finally, the data is 
presented to the user/desktop program.

Should the program find that the physical sectors ARE indeed there, it 
demands that the original disk be used and aborts. The program won't run 
unless from the original disk, and the "visible" data is useless without 
the program restructuring/decrypting it. Voila, an uncopyable disk (at 
least to the casual--and possibly experienced--user.)

Note that this is all theoretical though; I'm not a hardware guy. 

Rod Jackson


euman at bellsouth.net wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I am in need of some advice. I would like to make a diskette that 
> contains
> private data
> non-transferable to another diskette. What I mean is writting bits to 
> the
> boot sector or
> a set of bits at a certain sector that would if copied, be transfered to
> another location on
> the copy to diskette making it inoperable. Is there a way to protect 
> serial
> numbers on
> diskettes that anyone knows about? What sectors or hidden sectors would 
> not
> transfer
> if a copy was made? There must be a way!
> 
> I agree that some of the virus code out there might help in this 
> situation.
> I would rather stay away from this type of copy protection...
> 
> I thought about using a scatter scheme "broken files" that could only be 
> put
> back together,
> if I could find out how to protect the disk first..
> 
> Any GREAT ideas.... very much appreciated!
> 
> Euman
> euman at bellsouth.net
> 
>