New top story on Hacker News: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?
Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?
64 by throwaway932874 | 105 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I work for a small company and we've recently come across a version of our software that's been cracked. Specifically, the crack modifies some of our binaries to circumvent the activation process and allows bogus registration keys. Pretty standard stuff AFAIK. Thankfully, our digital signatures are lost in the process, so that's reassuring. We haven't done the most thorough search of how widespread the issue is, but we've estimated that it's about 1 user per day since the early half of 2022. A license costs a few thousand dollars, but we do regional pricing and bulk licenses for larger firms. We also provide free licenses to academics (with proof). For context, we are a <15 person company where we all wear multiple hats and would like to continue providing great service, training and introducing features. It's clear to us why someone would crack our software, especially in lower income countries. I'm not entirely sure what other information would be helpful to provide, but I was wondering if anyone has run into this into the past, and how it was mitigated. While we'll always have some piracy, we'd like to keep it to a minimum.
64 by throwaway932874 | 105 comments on Hacker News.
Hi HN, I work for a small company and we've recently come across a version of our software that's been cracked. Specifically, the crack modifies some of our binaries to circumvent the activation process and allows bogus registration keys. Pretty standard stuff AFAIK. Thankfully, our digital signatures are lost in the process, so that's reassuring. We haven't done the most thorough search of how widespread the issue is, but we've estimated that it's about 1 user per day since the early half of 2022. A license costs a few thousand dollars, but we do regional pricing and bulk licenses for larger firms. We also provide free licenses to academics (with proof). For context, we are a <15 person company where we all wear multiple hats and would like to continue providing great service, training and introducing features. It's clear to us why someone would crack our software, especially in lower income countries. I'm not entirely sure what other information would be helpful to provide, but I was wondering if anyone has run into this into the past, and how it was mitigated. While we'll always have some piracy, we'd like to keep it to a minimum.
Comments
Post a Comment