Anyone have used Computer license of IDA?

silver · #1 10-11-2018, 19:32

Recently I heard Hex-rays will not sell named licenses to company users. Instead, they need to buy computer license. According to the rules:

Quote:

Licensed to a specific machine, as many local users as one wants, provided only one of them uses the software at any given time.

However I want to know how they do this. I have a few possible ideas:

collect hardware info when you buy it, and send it to Hex-rays for a license
run the IDA with some "locked" license, the IDA will collect those hardware info, and "activate" the license
send some broadcast messages, and frequently do check to Hex-rays servers to ensure only one copy with one computer ID is running at the same time

I have no computer licenses, and I can not get any binary, so I do not have any clues about if they used any of those 3 ideas, or they used neither. I just want to know how they managed to do this, so maybe I and my friends can use IDA happily again.

Any suggestions are welcome. Thanks.

UniSoft · #2 10-11-2018, 20:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by silver

Recently I heard Hex-rays will not sell named licenses...

After leak of IDA7.0 they remove it from list...
But now it is available again
https://www.hex-rays.com/cgi-bin/quote.cgi?cmd=products

Quote:

Originally Posted by silver

3. send some broadcast messages...

yup, even current version do this...

silver · #3 10-11-2018, 22:51

Quote:

But now it is available again

Yes, but due to some (human) limitation, I can only buy under a company's name, and they told me I can only use Computer/Floating license if buy under a company's name.

As for the broadcast message....I already removed it, just don't know if they have any special messages under computing license.

Anyway, the key problem is: does hex-rays use hardware-id for computer license?

Wondering someone with a computer license to reply to this thread...