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From: vanam@pttesac.UUCP (Marnix van Ammers)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Copy protect methods & paranoia
Message-ID: <262@pttesac.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Aug-86 13:26:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: pttesac.262
Posted: Mon Aug 18 13:26:57 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Aug-86 04:45:28 EDT
References: <236@neoucom.UUCP> <169@hao.UUCP> <584@mips.UUCP>
Reply-To: vanam@pttesac.UUCP (-Root Admin-)
Organization: Pacific Bell ESAC, San Francisco
Lines: 27

In article <74@rayssd.UUCP> jds@rayssd.UUCP (Jeffrey D. Struven) writes:
>
>their software but I don't it will ever happen.  The credit card
>protection is a nice idea, but one can usually find a way to edit the
>contents of a disk so as to render that protection useless.  One could
>in effect replace all the pertinent data with asterisks.  Not too many
>credit card numbers are *** *** *** ****.  What ever one guy can copy

I haven't tested this, but I'm 99% sure that they have
protected the credit card number so that if it is changed in
any way the program will not run.  They just get a checksum or
CRC of the data and have a routine that checks to see that it
hasn't changed.  They can scramble the code for this in such a
way that it is nearly impossible to find where the checksum is.

What they could also do (or just threaten to do) is to keep a
second copy of the data somewhere (scrambled of course).
Then if they get a hold of a copy of one of your disks which has
the original number not matching the hidden number, they could
sue you.  I don't know if such a suit would succeed, but
the existence of such a disk would sure make you look guilty.

By the way, it's not necessarily a credit card number.  It can be
just your name, address, and telephone number, or anything that
identifies you.

Marnix