Cloning / emulating a USB dongle

[PDRD]

Hi All.
Just wandering if anyone has any experience with cloning a USb dongle? We have a software programme that runs with a USB dongle plugged in. If you remove it the programme stops.

I want to get a backup copy of each USB to cover ourselves. Most are in laptops so very vulnerable.

Thanks
Phil

 

[Paul_Rosser]

Do you mean you want to make a copy of the dongle ? Sounds like it's used by the software as some sort of licence verification which will make it harder to copy usually.

 

[IanG]

That's probably not going to be acceptable to whoever wrote or sold you the software.

Plus, as posted, its not going to be a case of replicating the device without specialist knowledge.

As a measure to reduce piracy, it would be pointless otherwise.

Did you speak with the software house to see what they would suggest if a dongle is lost or damaged? Might be a charge but its probably going to be cheaper than faffing trying to do it yourself and certainly more legal.

 

[martin_frost]

Your issue is less technical and more legal.

If the supplier is out of business, fair enough, if not and you want to evade paying them for another license then few will want to help.

However, if its a genuine reason its not complex to clone it, assuming each stick is not unique.

USB devices contain partitions and images (of partitions) can be read and written.

 

[leemason]

I do sympathies as these days doing software licensing like this is crazy. It used to be more wide spread but in these days or virtual desktops and cloud computing it's just silly. I remember one instance where a large company that I was doing work for had a contact centre system which needed a dongle in a server. This server about 70 people in a call centre. The dongle got smashed by someone trying to install another server. The contact centre was down for 2 days waiting for the suppliers to send another dongle!

Anyway, here is some software that will clone a dongle and present it as an emulated dongle to a Windows machine: http://www.software-key.org/donglebackup.html

I have spoken to one software company who still use dongles about this and they did not seem to have a problem with my emulating this on a critical Windows server, but this would be down to the individual company to decide I guess.

 

[ClevaGroup]

It's a most likely a HASP key, you won't be cloning it in a hurry. HASP stands for Hardware Against Software Piracy FYI

 

[martin_frost]

Yes, hence my comment about easy unless each dongle is unique.

But even so that just makes it a little more difficult as you then need to emulate the hardware as well as the software.

 

[leemason]

That's exactly what the software that I posted in the link for does.

 

[10032012]

interesting link @leemason ... is the software unable to check that its an emulator rather than a real physical drive? (i.e. such like computer games checking against CD/DVD emulators)

 

[leemason]

That is what it looks like and certainly when I looked at this I was told that it would be indistinguishable from a hardware dongle to any software.

 

[martin_frost]

It wont be indistinguishable from a real dongle.

It may emulate to the degree that the software thinks its real, but it would not behave exactly the same.

For anyone who wants to really know why you have to watch this video:

Its fairly hardcore stuff.

 

[PDRD]

Thanks for the comments and help, sorry for the slow reply.

There is no legal issue as the original developer/supplier is no longer in business, hence the reason for wanting to 'make' a backup.

As for how it works and whether each dongle is locked differently, I have no idea. I have found somewhere that you can post it too and they will do it, but I can't risk it not coming back so I will try the link above.

Thanks