Device based Software Licensing in C#

There are many ways that a software can be protected and mostly by introducing a licensing key. It could probably be the oldest way. So let's make it work on our application too.

This time we generate a key based on PC configuration. As the matching key we can use our own encryption to send back the valid key.

It's simple, look at below.

 static void Main(string[] args)  
     {  
       StringBuilder sbKey =new StringBuilder();  
       ManagementClass mc = new ManagementClass("win32_processor");  
       ManagementObjectCollection moc = mc.GetInstances();  
       foreach (ManagementObject mo in moc)  
       {  
         sbKey.Append(mo.Properties["processorID"].Value.ToString());  
       }  
       Environment.GetLogicalDrives().ToList().FirstOrDefault();  
       string hddrive = Environment.GetLogicalDrives().ToList().FirstOrDefault() ?? "";  
       ManagementObject hddkey = new ManagementObject(@"win32_logicaldisk.deviceid=""" + hddrive[0] + @":""");  
       hddkey.Get();  
       sbKey.Append(hddkey["VolumeSerialNumber"].ToString());  
       string keyEncrypted = Encryption.Encrypt(sbKey.ToString());  
       Console.WriteLine("****************** Licensing Key Generator ******************");  
       Console.WriteLine();  
       Console.WriteLine(" Key : " + sbKey.ToString());  
       Console.WriteLine();  
       Console.WriteLine(" Encrypted Key : " + keyEncrypted);  
       Console.ReadLine();  
     }  

The output looks like;

For encryption & decryption, you can refer the older post here.

You can add and remove any values and make it hard to crack. This also can introduce to station based licensing because each license will apply only to one computer.

Happy coding...