NEWS RELEASE The Label Printers Joins CIAC’s (The Certification Industry Against Counterfeiting) North American Summit The CIAC’s recent North American Summit (Co-hosted by the National IPR Coordination Center and INTERPOL in Partnership with the Certification Industry Against Counterfeiting) “Working in Partnership Against a Common Threat” brought certification agencies, rights holders, law enforcement organizations, governmental agencies, and industry suppliers to a summit to discuss the threat that is counterfeiting, and how to address it. Aurora, IL, June 8, 2010 – The Label Printers recently participated in the CIAC’s North American Summit in Arlington, VA. Conference presenters included representatives of businesses such as Eaton Corporation and Leviton; government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement; law enforcement groups such as Interpol, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; and certification and standards organizations such as UL and ANSI. The Summit was attended by individuals representing the law enforcement community, IP and brand owners, anti-counterfeiting solution suppliers, and others interested in combating the global menace of counterfeiting and piracy. The Summit’s Conferences covered the following topics and case studies: Protecting Consumer Health & Safety Presentation Global Leadership – Delivering National Solutions Electrical Industry CIAC Related Case Study Law Enforcement CIAC Related International Intervention Case Study Panel 1 – Certification Industry – Working in Partnership with Industry What Works and How Can we do Better Together? Panel 2 – Law Enforcement/Government North American Perspective What Works and How can we do Better Together? Converting Information into Action Presentations included information from Customs such as the value of seizures in 2009 ($260,000,000), and the types of items seized (which included the increasingly serious threats of counterfeit electrical and pharmaceutical products). Rights holders, such as Eaton, face issues of highly recognized brands with high demand, coupled with high volume/low cost products (high volume counterfeiting is often about simple products such as batteries and electrical cords, which, when counterfeited, can have deadly consequences), marketed through a complex and loosely controlled supply/distribution chain. And law enforcement and standards organizations discussed the critical nature of partnerships and coordination in combating counterfeiting, and the ever increasing threat to safety and even national security that it represents. More information about the summit and the CIAC is available at their web site – www.ciac.info. On a day which has been designated World Anti Counterfeiting Day, The Label Printers encourages everyone from consumers to rights holders to standards and enforcement agencies to form partnerships, become aware of the depth and breadth of the problem, and together seek solutions to the increasingly prevalent and even deadly menace of counterfeiting. For over a decade The Label Printers, as the source for UL (Underwriters Laboratories) security labels, has been building and expanding their manufacturing and knowledge base in holographic products, tamper-evident products, micro printing, taggants, embedded codes, void adhesives, color shifting inks, and overt, covert, and forensic verification. The company invites you to learn more about how to protect your brand and intellectual property from counterfeiting, with multi-layered packaging solutions. Contact Lori Campbell, Chief of Operations, at 800.229.9549 (international calls at +001.630.897.6970) or e-mail us at anti-counterfeiting@thelabelprinters.com. The Label Printers is a leading custom label and packaging manufacturer, serving a widely diverse customer base around the globe – ranging from Fortune 100 to start-up businesses. The company serves industries as varied as wine pharmaceutical, and electrical. The Label Printers takes special pride in their quality, which is backed up by their ISO 9001 Registration (with an acceptance rating which has stayed at a consistent and nearly perfect 99.6% since 1989). About THE LABEL PRINTERS: The Label Printers, Aurora, IL, started in business in 1967, manufacturing simple label constructions in a 1,000 square foot space, with 1 employee, serving the local Chicago market. Today, the company has evolved into one of the 100 largest converters in the United States. The Label Printers owns and operates two facilities in Aurora, Illinois, manufacturing and distributing labels and packaging products to thousands of customers in 25 countries around the world. The company’s packaging products are certified to ISO 9001 standards, and their quality is backed up by their 99.6% Quality Acceptance Rating. The Label Printers is a member of NASPO (North American Security Products Organization), IACC (International Anticounterfeiting Coalition), CACP (Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy), TLMI (Tag and Label Manufacturers Institute) and the FTA (Flexographic Technical Association).
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The Label Printers Joins CIAC’s (The Certification Industry Against Counterfeiting) North American Summit
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Comments OffDefending Sarawak against piracy ? Fort Margherita
Overlooking a breathtaking view of the Sarawak River is Fort Margherita that was built in 1879. The fort was built to safeguard the Kuching capital from the invasion of pirates. It was Rajah Charles Brooke who built this fort and named it after his wife Ranne Margaret. The design of the building is based on an English Renaissance era of castles. The fort has a 3 storied tower that was used to keep watch for any invaders maneuvering down the river. Two of the rooms lower down in the tower was used as control rooms. A courtyard is surrounded by a high wall which is inlaid with glass shards to protect it from intruders scaling the walls. Inbuilt in to the high walls are wooden windows from which cannons were fired. Up until the Japanese occupation executions were carried out in the courtyard of convicted felons. Today Fort Margherita houses a Police Museum that was first opened to the public in 1971 with artifacts and rare pieces of weaponry, cloths, cooking utensils and furniture from Rajah Charles Brooke occupation to weapons taken during the communist insurgency. In the Police Museum are also the famous “laughing skulls” that many claim to say emits an eerie sound of laughter. Kuching is one of the lesser traveled tourist destinations in Malaysia, which gives the city a relaxed and easy going feel. Feel at home in a Kuching serviced apartment when you are looking for that perfect holiday accommodation or business trip. Somerset Gateway is a Kuching serviced accommodation that blends modern amenities without losing the old world charm of the city.
Maritime Security As a Deterrent Against Somalia Piracy
Somalian pirates have been systematically squeezing ships in one of the world’s most travelled shipping lanes for years. In 2008, 111 attacks were carried out in the Gulf of Aden. Millions in ransoms have been paid. Insurance costs have skyrocketed for vessels that pass through waters off the Somali coast. Still, shockingly little has been done to relieve the problem. In fact, there has been a shortage of good ideas. The Department for Transport within the UK have a website with guidelines for helping you deal with, and protect yourself from Somalian Piracy, as well as on Maritime Security in general. The UK’s military forces do not like to get involved directly in piracy cases, as they refuse to communicate and give in to terrorists. Just recently the couple who were kidnapped by these sea farers we done so in full view of the Royal Navy: it was deemed inappropriate and dangerous to intervene though as they may have been injured. Private security firms are offering maritime security as a viable solution. How is their approach different, you may ask? They would station maritime security where it is needed: onboard the merchant ship. There is a growing consensus that this form of maritime security is the best answer available. People will be placed on board the ships to help prevent attacks, and offer guidance on how to best handle and dangerous situation. This is, of course, a useful measure when it comes to sea trade anyway, as there are many potentials dangers to it. Ships will arrive in better time, thus helping your business if you were after supplies. In America, routes can be confirmed as safe by overhead pilots who will regularly fly the sea routes and give clearance. This multi- front security team will mean that all bases are covered, and that danger is avoided in many more cases. This method has now spread to European firms too. However, most European companies stress more non-violent means of Maritime security. This can start with greasing handrails so as to hinder pirates’ ability to board ships, which is a preventative measure and useful to buy a little extra time. The other end of the spectrum are weapons such as microwave guns, which do no lasting harm, but will disable a pirate shortly to allow a vessel to escape. Although they stress a non-violent approach, many of them do still arm their guards. These companies also offer escort and aerial surveillance to gather information/offer advice for navigating the area safely. All advertise their presence, in the hope that pirates will pass on a vessel that is using a security force for easier prey. Armed guards or non-violent, many insurance companies are offering significant discounts to companies that purchase Maritime security. Having to secure your ships against piracy is not ideal, but it’s the only way you can protect your investment against this threat.
8 Ways To Protect And Obfuscate Your .Net Code Against Reverse-Engineering Using Crypto Obfuscator
IntroductionMost non-.Net compilers emit binary programs containing native CPU instructions which are very hard to disassemble, decompile and reverse-engineer. However, all .Net compilers such as C#, VB.Net, Managed C++, IronPyhton, etc emit compiled programs in MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) format. This format preserves a lot of high-level information about your software such as class, field, method, property and parameter names and even the actual code in a well-defined structure. This has facilitated the development of many decompilers and dissassemblers which can extract this information from a .Net assembly. Some tools can even reconstruct the actual structure of your code including loops, if statements, method calls, etc. Needless to say, this means that an unprotected .Net assembly is an easy target for hackers, crackers or competitors who can easily reverse-engineer your .Net code from the compiled assembly. They can easily glean valuable trade secrets, algorithms, sensitive information such as passwords, SQL queries, etc stored in strings, or even try to find security vulnerabilities and change product functionality. Obfuscation & Protection TechniquesAll is not lost however as there exist various methods and techniques which makes it extremely difficult for a hacker, cracker or competitor to reverse-engineer your application. Crypto Obfuscator makes use of the following advanced and sophisticated obfuscation and protection techniques:Symbol RenamingCrypto Obfuscator renames the names of the classes, methods, properties, fields, events, etc in your .Net assembly to a garbled unintelligible name. Depending on the symbol renaming scheme chosen, this will result in either very long or very short names which have no relation to the original names. The original names cannot be derived or guessed from the obfuscated names. Since meaningful names are the most powerful ally when reverse-engineering a software, this makes it very hard to determine the purpose and function of the renamed entity. Advanced Overload RenamingCrypto Obfuscator renames fields or methods with different signatures to the same name. For example two fields having types int and boolean will be given the same name. Similarly two methods will different parameters will be given the same name. In the case of methods, the method return type is also used in the signature even though high-level languages such as C# and VB.Net do not support overloading by return type. The .Net runtime is able to differentiate between the fields/methods without any problem since the signatures are different. Needless to say, this scheme makes it even harder to reverse-engineer your code. String Encryption.Net assemblies contain all the literal strings used in your code in plain view for anybody to see. Literal strings often contain sensitive information such as login information, passwords, SQL queries, algorithm parameters. In addition, they also help in reverse-engineering your .Net code by providing a marker. For example, someone wanting to remove license checking from your software will search for all instances of strings like “license” or ‘valid” or “invalid”. Once they have found such strings, they will examine the surrounding code to see if it is the licensing checking code and if so, remove or disable it. Crypto Obfuscator solves all these issues by encrypting all literal strings in your .Net code. Advanced Tamper DetectionCrypto Obfuscator can perform strong name verification of the assembly itself even if strong-name verification has been turned OFF on the machine on which the assembly is running or if the assembly has been registered in the verification ‘skip-list’ – this is typically done by hackers or crackers. Furthermore, the strong name verification is done using the original key used to sign the assembly when it was processed by Crypto Obfuscator. Thus, strong name verification fails even if the key is removed or replaced – again something typically done by hackers or crackers.Control Flow ObfuscationIn .Net assemblies, even the code is stored in a well structured manner using a published format. This enables a sufficiently advanced decompiler to reconstruct to a pretty accurate degree the exact structure of your code including the for/while loops, if statements, try-catch blocks, etc. When doing control flow obfuscation on your code, Crypto Obfuscator changes the structure of your code into spaghetti code while maintaining 100% the logic and output of the code. The result is that decompilers are unable to reconstruct your code and output incorrect or garbage code. Most of the times they crash while trying to do so. This provides powerful method body protection for your software.ILDASM SuppressionILDASM (Microsoft IL Dissassembler) is a free tool to disassembly any .Net assembly into MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) and extract the entire contents including the classes, methods, code and resources from the assembly. Crypto Obfuscator can modify the assembly in such a way that ILDASM refuses to disassemble the assembly. Anti-Reflection ProtectionMany decompilers, dissassemblers and memory dumpers use .Net Reflection mechanism to extract information about a .Net assembly. Crypto Obfuscator can modify the assembly in such a way that such tools will fail when trying to work on your assembly.Anti-Decompiler ProtectionAdvanced decompilers such as the freely available .Net Reflector are your enemy in the battle against the hackers, crackers and competitors. Crypto Obfuscator can modify your assembly in such a way that such tools fail to work on your assembly – many times they are not even able to open your assembly, let alone examine it.Resource EncryptionTools such as ILDASM, .Net Reflector and others can easily extract resources from your assembly. Such resources often contain valuable, sensitive or copyrighted information such as images, UI (WPF baml files), textual content, etc. Crypto Obfuscator can hide and encrypt all such resources so that it is impossible to see them, let alone extract them from the assembly. Assembly EncryptionCrypto Obfuscator can encrypt all dependant assemblies and any additional assemblies used by your software. This makes it impossible for someone to get their hands on individual assemblies. You can use this feature to your advantage by separating all sensitive or important code and data in a dependant assembly. In fact, this can be taken to an extreme – simply put ALL your code/data in a separate assembly and use a shell assembly as a starter/loader assembly for your application. ConclusionEach of the above techniques on their own are pretty powerful and effective against hackers, crackers and competitors. When combined and used together for the obfuscation and code protection of your .Net assembly, they form an impenetrable shield which is extremely difficult to break. Even if broken into by the most expert of hands, all they will see are garbage, encrypted or obfuscated code, names and data. Crypto Obfuscator arms .Net developers with a powerful code protection and obfuscation tool which enable them to deploy their .Net software without fear of IP theft, reverse-engineering, hacking, cracking and piracy.
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: .Net, Against, Code, Crypto, Obfuscate, Obfuscator, Protect, ReverseEngineering, Using, Ways Comments OffDish Tv And Its Drive Against Piracy
Dish TV is one of the most popular forms of satellite TV entertainment that can give you the best TV experience ever. However, at present the competition in the satellite TV industry is very high and hence the protection of content has become one of the matters of grave concern to the satellite TV providers. The protection of their valuable content can give the pay TV provider a chance to enjoy greater revenue. For this reason some of the satellite TV providers in the United States are trying hard to protect their content from its competitors as well as piracy. They have applied some strict measures for the same. Piracy too has become one of the most crucial problems of this industry. Piracy refers to unauthorized copying of broadcasted content or programming without the consent of the rightful owner for commercial purpose. This is a criminal offence and once caught the concerned person can be severely penalized. Posting pirate software or selling pirated content is a violation of copyright and other laws. At present there are a number of ways of piracy. Satellite TV contents are also being pirated through different kinds of satellite TV PC software. In recent times some software was available on the web that allowed people to watch Satellite TV content using the free to air receivers. Viewers who want to watch dish TV entertainment without paying satellite TV provider has to purchase the software. Thus the rightful owner of the programs of the satellite TV provider did not get any benefit for the satellite TV viewing and the software owner, without taking prior permission from the dish TV provider was making a brisk business. Hence, this too is considered as piracy. A leading provider of dish entertainment has filed a case against this kind of piracy and won it as well. In the verdict of the case the court has made two points very clear. First of all posting such pirate software on the web is considered as a breach of Federal Communication Act. For this reason it is considered as a punishable crime. Secondly the legal damage for this kind of act of piracy should be calculated according to the number of people who has downloaded the software. With such cases the company has took a firm stand point against piracy. The company has also paid special attention to the content protection. It has entered into a contract with one of the leading content protection provider of the world. The content protection provider offers a wide array of flexible solutions for content protection. These solutions go very well with the different features, services and functionality of dish TV. thus the satellite TV provider can enjoy more security of their content and can take a firm stand against piracy. With the partnership with a content protection company, the dish TV provider has thus secured its content and at the same time have put made a secured standpoint against its competitors.
Know Your Rights Before You Throw Your Weight Around; Carol Kaye’s Misguided Fight Against Digital Piracy
It is completely understandable that artists resent their intellectual property being pirated. As it is, the majority of the money made from their music goes to publishers, record labels, agents and/or managers, leaving the performers with a small piece of the pie. So when pirates chip away at their earnings even more, frustration can boil over to anger. But artists need to take a strong lesson from Carol Kaye: know your rights before you throw your legal weight around. Kaye, who turns 75 on March 24, is a legendary studio musician and was one of the few professional female bass guitar players of her generation. She has taught guitar for fifty years and has written several books on how to play the guitar. When Kaye discovered that some of her sheet music and courses are available on various torrent sites. There is no shame in not knowing the infrastructure hierarchy of the Internet or understanding how copyright applies to this new medium. What’s not excusable is remaining ignorant and waging a misguided fight against digital piracy. While there can be little argument that piracy of copyrighted material is both illegal and immoral, you cannot blame technology. At one point, Kaye announced that she had filed a complaint against Google with the Federal Trade Commission for allowing illegal downloads. That would be like trying to blame Ford for making the getaway car used in a bank robbery. Technology is agnostic; how individuals use that technology is not the responsibility of Google or any other search engine. That is true of any technology that has other valid uses. This was the heart of the issue when Sony sued Betamax, claiming video tape machines were being used to illegally copy shows and movies that were broadcast on television. The Supreme Court rules in favor of Betamax and part of the ruling centered on the fact the VCR’s had legitimate uses that superseded any illegal activities engaged by individuals. The same logic applies to copier machines. But Kaye didn’t stop there. She went after a blog site that covers torrent news and accused it of infringement, apparently believing that writing about torrent sites was equivalent to offering illegal files for download. And she followed up that belief with a torrent of her own – a diatribe against the blog site. The unfortunate aspect is, instead of drawing attention to the real problem of piracy, Ms. Kaye has herself become the focus, and not in a good way. So before any artist starts tossing legal threats, they need to make sure the go after the actual infringers and refrain from shooting the messengers or innocent bystanders.
British Game Developer Talks About Nintendo Company Road to Fight Against Piracy
In game industry circle, to Nintendo palm game machine DS, the appearance of writable card means a disaster, which enables game players easily download and play free games from the internet, instead of buying copyrighted ones. For What Reasons People all Choose Them?! acekard 2i are the Favorite of Andrew Mclennan of Metaforic technic company formerly was a British game developer. Why People in Japan all Adore dstti card He has developed games for TV game, PC and NDS flat, he also helplessly watched the game which he participated developing hasn’t yet come into market but can be downloaded from net already. He worked on game developing for 17 years, and nearly every game was illegally copied. Writable cards exist all over the world, and just only 10 dollors can make game players freely play almost all NDS games.Hey! dstt cards are the Favorites of People in Switzerland Andrew Mclennan isn`t the only one agonized for this. What is the Best For this Year? Dazzling r4 Absolutely! More agonizing is Nintendo. In 2008, Nintendo strike out his hands of his own, he used legal means to force against the rampant DSLINK R4, and made statement that R4 DSLINK was not just a very serious injury for Nintendo users, but also for other non-developed NDS and the third-party vendors In this March, Tokyo Court approved requirement by Nintendo to deliver injunction of R4 DSTT, which made R4 DSTT as unlawful existence in Japan. And it is said that Nintendo would claim to R4 DSTT developing companies, in order to destroy them thoroughly.Be More Photogenic in r4i sdhc Though with less room to survive in Japan, R4 writer card continues to exist in twilight areas of other places throughout the world. Technically the burn card itself is legal but the downloaded game ROM is definitely illegal. Thus the combination of both is difficult to define. Of course, Nintendo wants to trail to source of the vicious circle—writer card. According to Andrew Mclennan, Nintendo now seeks to cooperate with Metaforic company in a bid to solve the R4 writer card problem in the globe and even take suit of what does in Japan.Cutest April Fools’ Day Buys: dstt cards Metaforic Technology Corporation detected kernel and patch of R4 writable card which are programs used to run NDS game ROM. It`s quite understandable that Andrew Mclennan can not disclose much anti-piracy technology developed currently. Fortunately he explained the technology principle as, [we will set a security program into ROM of NDS games to ensure every game has its own security system. Each game has a set of security system matched.” Andrew Mclennan didn’t boast that this series of technic can 100% guard against hacker. He has to admit that the hackers have enough knowledge, time and motivation. Maybe finally they can break most of the security systems, but he hope it at least will take a long time for hacker to break. Moreover, it’s better to give them a headache during breaking. Andrew McLennan still needs a lot of time to introduce this technology to fight with the burn card. While the R4 has already existed for many years and there are many sites for people downloading all illegal NDS games over the past four and a half years all over the world. In 2007, the [Thames”, a British paper reported 35 million R4 card had been sold and now the figure is even bigger. Andrew Mclennan said their knowledge of R4 cards are limited, and R4 could continuously crack official anti-piracy technique safe sytem by updating firmware. But he claimed that the skill solve plan of Metaforic technology company had the prvention ability to updating firmware. “The updating of firmware can’t break through our protection system though for now we can’t say too much about the details.” Although Andrew Mclennan is working on the technic of anti-piracy, he thought there’s no need to ban burn card by legal method. He claimed that he respect those who only use burn card to develop software and game by themselves- though there’re only a few. He added that presently law in relative areas is also absent, so it is difficult to prove the circulation of burning disks is illegal. Today prohibit one burning disk, maybe tomorrow a new disk will emerge. Therefore, Andrew agrees to apply technical methods rather than legal methods to solve this problem. The new model DSi of NDS series launched in Japan last year comes into European and American market continuously. At the beginning of its selling, it is true that all the burning disks couldn’t be used. However, confronted with Nintendo’s efforts, hackers surely won’t give in. Presently, burning disks dealing with DSi are coming up. While the priest climbs a post, the devil climbs ten. The way to against pirate is tough. There is a long way to go.
Is all your company?s software properly licensed? Trading Standards are now using powers to take criminal action against unlicensed software use
Although unlicensed use is rife in the third world, Europe (including the UK) is far from immune. A survey produced by the Business Software Alliance (“the BSA”) in May 2008 estimated that losses to the business software industry in the UK amounts to about £925 million annually. Efforts to crack down on illegal use of software have, in the past, mainly been through trade associations such as FAST (Federation against Software Theft) and the BSA, although some actions have been taken by individual software companies. The scale of the problem was recognised by the Government sponsored Gowers Review of IP, published in December 2006. One of the recommendations of the Gowers Review was to bring into force section 107A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 which would give Trading Standards powers to make test purchases, enter premises and inspect and seize goods and documents. The section was brought into force in April 2007, but has not been used by Trading Standards until recently. During the second half of 2008 Trading Standards in Cardiff (in conjunction with FAST and the BSA) started a campaign to educate local businesses as to the need for software licences and the possible downside of failing to have the necessary licences in place. This campaign came to a head on 10 December 2008 when Trading Standards used the powers at its disposal to inspect a Cardiff company when it carried out “a full forensic inspection of its software estate.” The result of the Trading Standards inspection have not been made public yet. However, the BSA issued a press release on 16 December 2008 reporting on a settlement it had reached with Total Repair Solutions Limited in Scotland. It was reported that Total Software Solutions will be paying £120,000 by way of settlement with the BSA “as well as legalising and acquiring software needed by the business.” It is clear from recent developments in the UK that any business using unlicensed software is now at even greater risk of both criminal and civil sanctions if the unlicensed use comes to the attention of the relevant bodies. It will come as no surprise that FAST and the BSA encourage anonymous tipping off by employees and third parties. It is particularly important to realise that use of unlicensed software (including software downloaded by employees) may result in the company and its directors and managers being criminally liable for copyright infringement. We recommend that all companies should regularly audit all software used in their business and that formal policies should be put in place forbidding downloading and use of software by employees unless that use is formally licensed. If you would like to discuss software licensing, please contact us.
The Criminal Copyright Infringement Case Against Kifah Maswadi: Case 1:08-Cr-00037-Tse Usa V. Maswadi
Product DescriptionKifah Maswadi, 24, of Oakland , Fla. , was sentenced to 15 months in prison for selling pirated video game systems. Maswadi previously pleaded guilty on June 3, 2008 , to a one-count indictment for criminal copyright infringement, after being indicted on Jan. 24, 2008 . Maswadi admitted to selling “Power Player” handheld game consoles that were pre-loaded with at least 76 pirated copies of copyright protected video games, most of which were owned by Nintendo and Ni… More >> The Criminal Copyright Infringement Case Against Kifah Maswadi: Case 1:08-Cr-00037-Tse Usa V. Maswadi
Posted in Software Piracy Tags: 108Cr00037Tse, Against, Case, Copyright, Criminal, Infringement, Kifah, Maswadi Comments OffSoftware Protection Against Software Piracy
What is Software Piracy? How much do you know about Software Piracy? According to Business Software Alliance, Software Piracy is the unauthorized copying or distribution of copyrighted software. This can be done by copying, downloading, sharing, selling, or installing multiple copies onto personal or work computers. Whether you are casually making a few copies for friends, loaning disks, distributing or downloading pirated software from the Internet, or buying a single software program and then installing it on multiple computers (including personal), you are committing copyright infringement—also known as software piracy. How well is your software protected? Software Proctection is a term that is well known in software developers where they strive themselve to have better and better protection each time to protect their software been pirated and for illegal usage. So, most of the software nowadays are protected somehow in a software based license protection or a hardware based licensed protection. Software based and Hardware based Software Protection Software based Software License Protection is the earliest protection method available and usually the protected application will require user to key in Serial No., License Key or Unlock Code to activate the software license. Most of the third party Software License Protection provider will provide a ready made encryption engine of which software developers can use this to encrypt their software applications as to add the protection layer onto their software applications. Usually, the protection will tie with some unique ID from the computer system such as Hard Disk ID or Network Card ID. Also due to this reason, usually if there is any hardware problem such as Hard Disk or Network Card spoilt, license re-activation will be needed. It will also means the Software Developers will need to keep track and verify the License Key reissue request from the end users, of which some end users might try to take advantage on it. As Software based Protection do not come with any additional devices, it will have to store all the licensing information into the computer system and mostly hide it inside registry. Hardware based Software License Protection is now the most popular protection method where the end user will require to plug in the valid hardware device to the computer in order to run the application. Third party provider will sell the devices which is commonly called Dongles together with software SDK for software developers to do the integration. Usually for Hardware based Software License Protection, end user will not require to key in any Serial No., License Key nor Unlock Code, just plug in the Dongle and run the application, the protection will authenticate the license through Dongle. There are many different forms of Dongles available in the market and the most advanced Dongles are now built based on MCU Smart Card of which it is able to provide very maximum protection and thus make hacking almost impossible. As now, software developers are able to determine your software licenses with their Dongles thus make software distribution much easier and more secure. Both Software and Hardware Based Protection have their own Pros and Cons. Different software developers might have different preferences on selecting either Software based or Hardware based Software License Protection into their software applications. Hardware Based Software Protection is no more Costly! SecureMetric Technology introducing its hardware based protection dongle into the market at impressive competitive pricing. Any software Developers who are interested on hardware based software protection are welcomed to try on SecureDongle X & SecureDongle Software Development Kit and you will be stunned by its fantastic features at its impressive pricing! Visit http://www.securemetric.com to know more about SecureDongle X and detailed about software licensing protection.