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How is Authentication different to other Activation schemes?

 
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Infralution



Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Posts: 5027

PostPosted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 4:18 am    Post subject: How is Authentication different to other Activation schemes? Reply with quote

Product activation is a licensing technology that issues licenses linked to a specific computer. It prevents a customer from (illegally) using a license key on multiple computers or sharing the license key with their friends. It requires the customer to "activate" their license key (typically via the internet) whenever they install the product on a new computer. While product activation is an effective mechanism for preventing key sharing it has traditionally caused a number of problems both for the customer and the developer. Infralution has developed its authentication system with view to overcoming and minimizing these problems:

  • Robustness to Hardware Change - most product activation systems link the activated license to hardware characteristics such as the MAC address, hard drive serial number etc. This means that if the user upgrades their machine or operating system the licenses are invalidated. This can generate a large number support calls and is frustrating for end users. Infralution's authentication system, by default, links the license to the computer name. This allows the user to upgrade their hardware and even their operating system without invalidating their license. This scheme provides a sufficient deterrent to key sharing for most applications and is a good compromise between robustness and security. You can however easily modify the ILS authentication model to link licenses to some other hardware or operating system characteristic. Infralution's "Clone Detection" mechanism can automatically detect and revoke authentications where a user attempts to bypass the licensing by cloning their computer system using virtualization or by manually configuring multiple computers to have the same name.
  • Costs/Dependency - Many licensing companies that offer product activation also want a cut of your licensing fees. ILS includes the authentication web service software that you host on your website at no extra cost. This also means you aren't dependent on a third party company to issue licenses for your products.
  • Authentication Control - Infralution's License Tracker application provides a simple and flexible mechanism for controlling the authentication web service. License Tracker allows you to monitor authentications and control authentication parameters for products or individual license keys.
  • Security - the Infralution authentication web service does not include key generation logic or data. This means that even if a cracker gains full access to the website hosting your authentication web service they will be unable to extract the information required to generate valid license keys. In addition all communication with the authentication web service is protected and validated using public key encryption. This means that you don't need to purchase an SSL certificate and host the web service on a HTTPS enabled server to ensure security.

Authentication is not the right solution for all applications - that's why Infralution offers a choice of licensing models. Check out this excellent article on Code Project - Piracy and Unconventional Wisdom. It discusses some other factors you should consider when deciding on a licensing strategy.
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