4 ms·

Screenwriter wonders: Could this be done by a good hacker in real life?

• redspark 14y ago
  Super basic - Would fool a high percentage of the audience. He could hack the software to call home to his own server, rather than the protools server.
• rex_gsd 14y ago
  If he could somehow work out the algorithm that the serial numbers follow. The software or server only knows that a serial number is correct by either : 1) It matches an algorithm Ie, if your algorithm was 'all even numbers' are correct serials, then if your boxes had the numbers 100, 102, 104 then it may be obvious that 106 would be a correct serial number. 2) The software connects to the software creators server to verify a random serial number on the box is stored in their database and hasn't been activated before. To get around this, you could either hack the server and copy their database or intercept the response from the server to the application and emulate this response that indicates 'yes this is a valid serial'. Though I think your character would sound cooler if he did #1 :)
• dear 14y ago
  Boxes of software? Software are downloaded. Dinosaurs come in boxes.
• logn 14y ago
  It's common to find serial number generators posted online. I just googled "protools serials" and found one. The algorithms to generate them are reverse engineered and published. That's not a very sexy hack but for a dude selling software "fallen off a truck" is how they would do it. However, protools uses a dongle system now (a hard USB key) so I'm not sure that would work, but the serial gen method would apply for other audio products. But I question the premise here. A box of protools already has the serial to activate it. Do you know they track the boxes and can label them as stolen? The cost to protools to make an individual box of software is probably less than a dollar.