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Back when I had to secure software using hardware dongles, I came up with my most evil idea. For those who don't know, dongles are hardware tokens that represe

Back when I had to secure software using hardware dongles, I came up with my most evil idea. For those who don't know, dongles are hardware tokens that represent your license to use the software, and the dongle had to be attached to the computer so the software could check for its presence. Using dongles required you to either add code to your program to test for the presence of the dongle, or you could encrypt the executable using a key stored on the dongle and a program launcher would retrieve the key from the dongle to decrypt your program. In either case, if the dongle wasn't present a dialog would appear telling you the software was unlicensed and then terminate the application. My evil idea was to tell people up front that the dongle was required for the software to work, but rather than terminate the application when the dongle wasn't present I would introduce subtle errors into the data manipulated by the program. * CAD program missing the dongle? Each second, a random vertex is moved by 1 pixel * Statistics program missing the dongle? Random numbers are added to data sets during aggregate calculations * Video game missing the dongle? Game stutters at random intervals. Oh sure you could use the software without the dongle, but it would be super-annoying to do so. I never got the opportunity to implement this because people realized that dongles are dumb.

Starwatcher2001 5y ago
Many moons ago I came across an anti-theft device for a car that was designed on similar lines. The idea was that car alarms are easily defeated and are generally ignored anyway if they go off. When armed, the circuit would cause the car to run but stall frequently, blow the horn and lights and misbehave in other ways. Eventually the thief would assume the car was in serious disrepair and abandon it.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  I kinda like this idea, although I suspect that some may be willing to put up with the annoyance if they're aware its just a ruse?
lioeters 5y ago
It reminds me of some audio software, when there's no license registered, it injects a burst of noise every 30 seconds.
NicoJuicy 5y ago
Or make them alpha testers
jjav 5y ago
> I would introduce subtle errors into the data manipulated by the program I no longer remember the games, but in the 80s copy protected games, I remember some where if the game detected it was a cracked copy it would still run fine but the game would be missing critical items so it became impossible to progress. Unless you knew this, you could go crazy trying to find the items that didn't exist.

Starwatcher2001 5y ago

Many moons ago I came across an anti-theft device for a car that was designed on similar lines. The idea was that car alarms are easily defeated and are generally ignored anyway if they go off. When armed, the circuit would cause the car to run but stall frequently, blow the horn and lights and misbehave in other ways. Eventually the thief would assume the car was in serious disrepair and abandon it.

netizen-936824 5y ago
I kinda like this idea, although I suspect that some may be willing to put up with the annoyance if they're aware its just a ruse?

lioeters 5y ago

It reminds me of some audio software, when there's no license registered, it injects a burst of noise every 30 seconds.

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Or make them alpha testers

jjav 5y ago

> I would introduce subtle errors into the data manipulated by the program I no longer remember the games, but in the 80s copy protected games, I remember some where if the game detected it was a cracked copy it would still run fine but the game would be missing critical items so it became impossible to progress. Unless you knew this, you could go crazy trying to find the items that didn't exist.