What exactly is HARD to pirate?
edit: More specifically, Crack. I remember x-force having sources in all the major places ready to dump it to their cracker division.
Skype for a very long time had some absurd protection against things like attaching debuggers, adding code, and whatnot (as I recall). There was a great presentation about it, but I cannot for the life of me find it.
To my very limited knowledge, the most difficult software to crack was Steinberg Cubase. Such a PITA the hackers decided not to do it ever again. They quoted a ridiculously large figure for the amount code devoted to detect cracking (~30%), and having a significant impact on performance.
I had links about about bypassing anti-debugging techniques, I'll see if I can get my hands on them again.
Cubase was, by far, the hardest program to find a crack for. I remember a buddy of mine hooked me up with a cracked version that actually worked, but then I reinstalled and lost the files. Never found it again and stopped using Cubase. A year later I just purchased Ableton Live. I know so many people that use Live now because Cubase was too difficult to crack.
Ok, but not exactly the type of standalone software we are speaking upon, yes?
edit: as an aside, adobe's subscription based model could be seen as a way to curtail.
Many DAW's (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Cubase, and DSP "plug-ins" have special software protection schemes. Cubase uses something called eLicenser[1].
Another popular, niche product that has proven difficult to fully crack is a program called Pro Tools, created by DigiDesign, now owned by Avid. It uses a protection called PACE Anti-Piracy[2]. Many expensive pieces of software require unique hardware, either a security dongle or some other external device.
