I am looking a tool for protect and licensing my commercial software, Ideally must provide an SDK compatible with Delphi 7-2010, support AES encryption, Keys generator and capacity to create trial editions of my application.
I am currently evaluating ICE License, someone has experience with this software?
Themida has good protection, and I think it built with Delphi too ;-)
if you have a better budget, you can look at winLicense and other tools from same company.
Don't bother. It's not worth the hassle. Only a perfect licensing system would actually do you any good, and there's no such thing. And in the age of the Internet, if your system isn't perfect, all it takes is for one person anywhere in the world to produce a crack and upload it somewhere, and anyone who wants a free copy of your program can get it. (And using a pre-existing library just gives them a head start on cracking it.)
If you want people to pay for your software instead of just downloading it, the one and only way to do so is to make your software good enough that people are willing to pay money for it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
Have a look at this question which is pretty similar, and includes many of the tools.
I have used OnGuard (using the Delphi 2009/2010 source from SongBeamer) along with Lockbox to handle encryption with success. Both are commercial quality libraries and are free to use with full source.
I did once also use IceLicense, but switched to OnGuard/Lockbox which allowed me greater control over the key generation process which we embedded directly into our CRM system.
Take a look at InstallShield. We've been using it for a while ourselves, and it has a lot of capabilities for trial support, licensing, and others. I don't know about key generation off the top of my head as our use doesn't require keys, but there's a lot available to you from them.
I bought a license for ICE License in 2007. Unfortunatly (as far as I know) the component haven't been updated since June 2007. Back then a Vista compatible version was in the work but never came out of beta. I don't think they updated the component for Delphi 2009 and 2010 yet.
Ionworx is an one man company which might explain the lack of updates and lack of answer to support questions (emailed them 2-3 times since 2007 and never got back to me). They also removed their support forum from their site.
ICE License is better than nothing but I would stay away from this product because the lack of updates & support.
I investigated this a few years ago, and came to the following conclusions:
Set up compiler options, so that you have a version as a demo (perhaps with save functions removed), reduce multi user versions so that only one client can connect at a time (not using, for ex:
if connection=1 then reject
but reducing the viability for multiple connections in code)
Of course there is no %100 bullet-proof protection suite, but having some type of protection is better than having nothing.
I worked with WinLicense in Delphi 2009 and Delphi 2010 on Windows XP and Vista. It is a good product with lots of protection options, and customizations. It provides a SDK for developers, and has nice documentation and samples. It also provides a license manager for you. They provide trial download too.
As far as I remember, they offer some customer specific versions too; that means they are willing to provide a custom-built product which is customized according to your needs, but of course that will cost more.
Since WinLicense is a well-known and popular protection suit, many crackers are after it. As you know, the more famous a tool is, the more appealing it is to crackers. But the good thing about Oreans is that they actively monitor underground forums, and provide frequent updates to their products.
So IMHO, if you are supposed to buy a prebuilt protection suite, then you'd better go for WinLicense.
Can anybody tell why a low-cost USB-based dongle isn't a suitable protection scheme for high-value software?
Here's my list of software protection solutions. I'm looking at switching from ASProtect to another protection so I'm also in the process of analyzing most of these programs:
Themida (Oreans) http://www.oreans.com/products.php There are unpacking tutorials for all the versions of Themida. There is however the possibility of requesting "custom" builds which might help avoid this.
Code Virtualizer (Oreans) http://www.oreans.com/products.php Allows to protect specific parts of the application with a Virtual Machine. A cracker on a forum said he "made a CodeUnvirtualizer to fully convert Virtual Opcodes to Assembler Language".
EXECryptor Very difficult to unpack. GUI does not work under Vista. Appears to no longer be developed.
ASProtect Small protection overhead. Appears to no longer be developed.
TTProtect - $179 / $259 13 MB download. Chinese developer. Adds about xxx overhead to the exe. http://www.ttprotect.com/en/index.htm
VMProtect - $159 / $319 (now $199/$399) http://www.vmprotect.ru/ 10 MB download. Russian developer. Seems to be updated frequently. Supports 32 and 64-bit. Uncrackable according with one exetools post, but there seems to be an unpacking tutorial already. o Enigma Protect - $149 http://enigmaprotector.com/en/home.html 7 MB download. Russian developer. Regarded as very difficult to crack. Adds about xxx overhead to the exe.
NoobyProtect - $289 http://www.safengine.com/ 10.5 MB download. Chinese developer. Regarded as very difficult to crack. Adds about 1.5 MB overhead to the exe.
ZProtect - $179 http://www.peguard.com
RLPack http://www.reversinglabs.com/products/RLPack.php KeyGen already available.
One thing to note is that the more protection options you enable on the software protector, the bigger the possibility of the protected file being flagged by an anti-virus as a false-positive. For example, on Themida, checking the option to encrypt the file, will most likely create a few false-positives by a few anti-virus programs. I'll update this answer once I get more replies from a hackers forum where I asked some questions about these tools.
And finally, don't use the build-in serial number/license management of these tools. Although they might be more secure than using your own, you will be tied up to that specific tool. If you decide to change software protection in the future, you will also have to manage all the customer keys transfer to a new system.