tags:

views:

281

answers:

1
Q: 

What is a hardware-id?

Some forums that I regularly visit sell premium programs, and to prevent them from being leaked they use hardware-id authentication. That is, first they send you a program to run to grab your HWID, you tell them your HWID, they store it in a database, then they send you the actual program.

If your HWID isn't in the database, the program won't run. So what is Hardware-ID, and how is it generated? Why is it that my HWID is different depending on the programmer that sends me a HWID-grabber?

+5  A: 

A hardware ID is a (hopefully) unique identifier generated from the serial numbers present in such things as your cpu and network card. There is no standard algorithm, which is why it varies between individual developers.

A previous question discussed algorithms.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2333149/how-to-fast-get-hardware-id-in-c

Spike  2010-04-28 03:34:57
Algorithm for grabbing them? If they're already present in something like my cpu, wouldnt it be the same each time independent of the developer?
Rob  2010-04-28 03:40:43
Sure, but when you have IDs from a cpu, gpu, multiple MAC addresses, motherboard and a hard drive(s), then there's a multitude of ways to combine them into a single identifier.
Spike  2010-04-28 03:46:00
I see. Thanks for the help! :D
Rob  2010-04-28 03:47:31

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