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I have developed a small app for OS X and I provided it in the Mac App Store. Some weeks later I found a cracked version of my app on rapidscene.me. It seems for me the code signing of Apple is not strong enough to prevent cracks. Are there any other techniques to make the life harder for the crackers? Maybe binary checksums? How can I implement it easily?

Lance Roberts
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user2156649
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  • Why do you think there is an easy answer to a task that has proven to be impossible for the biggest companies? Game studios can't protect their multimillion dollar games requiring an always-on server connection from being cracked, you should see the futility of trying to protect your small app. The only company I know of that successfully stopped cracking of their products is Steinberg (with Cubase 6/7), which took multiple iterations of special Hardware dongles and code encryption schemes; this made cracking it so time-consuming that the scene decided it was not worth the effort. – l4mpi Mar 11 '13 at 12:11

2 Answers2

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As always, my answer is "make better content" rather than try to battle it out with an endless cat and mouse game.

Few reasons:

  • Even the biggest players, were big companies dedicated to creating copy protection schemes always fail, you have very little chance of success
  • If you make a mistake, you will bite the only hand that feeds you. In other words, malfunctioning copy protection does not bother crackers but will bother your paying customers.
  • Focusing on making your application better and serving your customers better will get you more paying customers than any copy protection scheme.

What I mean with make better content is focusing on doing what you are good at. Or as Notch, creator of MineCraft puts it:

Wasting money on trying to stop pirates or laying a guilt-trip on them are not approaches favored by Notch. Instead he prefers to offer online-only services that will add something to the game experience including level saving, centralized skins, friends lists and secure name verification for multiplayer. He hopes that these subtle feature additions can help to tempt pirates into become customers.

vertti
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Apple's (or anyone's) code signing validates authenticity, it doesn't prevent cracks. Authenticity checks can be bypassed easily. If you search for ways to prevent cracking here on SO, you'll generally find answers about spending time on enriching the application rather than preventing cracking of the software. As long as the code runs on the a user's computer, they will be able to modify how it is executed.

Fls'Zen
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