10.7. Software Protection

Software products are important objects of protection for a number of reasons:

1) they are a product of the intellectual work of highly qualified specialists, or even groups of several dozen or even hundreds of people;

2) the design of these products is associated with the consumption of significant material and labor resources and is based on the use of expensive computer equipment and high technologies;

3) to restore the broken software requires considerable effort, and the use of simple computing equipment is fraught with negative results for organizations or individuals.

Protection of software products has the following objectives:

• restriction of unauthorized access of certain categories of users to work with them;

• elimination of intentional corruption of programs in order to disrupt the normal course of data processing;

• prevention of deliberate modification of the program in order to damage the reputation of the manufacturer of software products;

• preventing unauthorized replication (copying) of programs;

• exclusion of unauthorized study of the content, structure and mechanism of the program.

Software products should be protected from unauthorized impacts of various objects: people, technical equipment, specialized programs, the environment. Influence on a software product is possible through the use of theft or physical destruction of documentation on the program or the machine carrier itself, as well as through the malfunction of the software.

Technical means (hardware) through the connection to a computer or transmission medium can read, decrypt programs, as well as their physical destruction.

Infection with a virus can be performed using specialized programs, virus infection of a software product, its unauthorized copying, unauthorized study of its content.

The environment due to abnormal phenomena (increased electromagnetic radiation, fire, flood) can cause physical destruction of the software product.

The easiest and most affordable way to protect software products is to restrict access to them using:

• password protection programs when they start;

• key diskette;

• a special technical device (electronic key) connected to the computer I / O port.

In order to avoid unauthorized copying of programs, special protection software should:

• identify the environment from which the program is launched;

• keep records of the number of authorized installations or copies made;

• to resist (up to self-destruction) the study of algorithms and programs of the system.

For software products, effective protective measures are:

1) identification of the environment from which the program is launched;

2) input of the number of authorized installations or copies executed;

3) opposition to non-standard formatting of the launching diskette;

4) securing the location of the program on the hard disk;

5) binding to the electronic key inserted into the I / O port;

6) binding to the BIOS number.

In the protection of software products, you must use legal methods. Among them stand out licensing agreements and contracts, patent protection, copyright, technological and industrial secrecy.