LAUSR

Software piracy is a modern day war between malicious software pirates and software developers. Annually, developers lose billions of dollars in revenue to piracy, making it an industry bane that must be controlled by all means. The drivefor improved software protection systems has increased the complexity of both proposed and implemented schemes. Some of the methods are cost intensive in terms of development, management and hardware requirement (smart card tokens), while this may be justified for costly software applications, for low cost and basic applications by small scale study presents a subtle software protection model using serial keys. The model implements a form of obfuscation by using hidden codes, encrypted functions and uses a distraction technique by diverting the attention of potential hackers to the serial key while trickily using coded strings for the actual user authentication