tags:

views:

206

answers:

1
Q: 

How sure is to create a USB security key using PnPDeviveID?

I need to protect software using a USB key. Can I just query a USB drive with WMI and obtain the PnPDeviceId from Win32_DiskDrive Class, and compare it with one already hashed and hard coded in the application? How secure is this? Can the PNPDeviceID property be modified? Is hardware coded? Any other idea?

Logically the USB drives are going to be carefully selected.

Thanks

+1  A: 

It can probably be faked with a device driver layer, I don't know if it can be changed in the device - I have never seen anything to do it.
I was thinking of this as a cheap alternative to a dongle and a way to distribute the software.

One thing to be careful of - the very cheap USB keys don't implement this they just send a random (?) key when plugged in, so they get a new id when inserted in different ports.

Martin Beckett  2009-08-20 14:31:24
Thanks for the advice, the USB drives are going to be selected carefully and buyed by myself. The USB dongle is not a solution because we need also to put part of the application in it.
backslash17  2009-08-20 14:42:09
I meant I was planning on using cheap 1Gb USB keys with their unique ID instead of $50 deskey dongles. Probably not as secure but crackers will just get around it in the app anyway.
Martin Beckett  2009-08-20 14:56:09

related questions

Displaying Flash content in a C# WinForms application
How to get the value of built, encoded ViewState?
Unhandled Exception Handler in .NET 1.1
How do I connect to a database and loop over a recordset in C#?
How do I most elegantly express left join with aggregate SQL as LINQ query
Get a new object instance from a Type in C#
.NET Testing Framework Advice
Automatically update version number
What is the difference between an int and an Integer in Java/C#?
How to write to Web.Config in Medium Trust ?
WinForms ComboBox data binding gotcha
How do you sort a C# dictionary by value?
Adding Scripting functionality to .NET applications
Floating Point Number parsing: Is there a Catch All algorithm?
How do I print an HTML document from a web service?
Decoding T-SQL CAST in C#/VB.net
Anatomy of a "Memory Leak"
How do I get a distinct, ordered list of names from a DataTable using Linq
Reliable Timer in a Console Application
How do I fill a DataSet or a DataTable from a LINQ query resultset ?
What's the difference between Math.Floor() and Math.Truncate() in .NET?
How do I calculate relative time?
How do I calculate someone's age in C#?
Are there any conversion tools for porting Visual J# code to C#?
When setting a form's opacity should I use a decimal or double?