Bypass Xilinx flexlm license check

[rwr...@gmail.com]

Hello,

While I certainly do not condone piracy, and I believe Xilinx should be compensated for their hard work, sometimes it can be handy to run ISE without limitations on the range of targetable devices and without having to go through the rather annoying 30-day evaluation license generation.

For the purpose of disabling the license checks, install ISE 14.7 (20131013) and make sure to create a ~/.Xilinx/Xilinx.lic (can be empty). With a hex editor, open /opt/Xilinx/14.7/ISE_DS/ISE/lib/lin64/libSecurity.so (md5: ba5974651af72b9296f76e40bc432679) and at offset 0x3EABA, which is the epilogue of Sec_Checkout, replace the two bytes 89 D8 with B0 42 (mov al, 0x42).

The new md5 will be 3d29e8d3c00ea2bb5beb406bcb9df95d. This effectively bypasses te license verification, and restrictions on targetable devices will be lifted.

--rwr

[KJ]

On Thursday, November 20, 2014 2:43:56 PM UTC-5, rwr...@gmail.com wrote:
> Hello,
>
> While I certainly do not condone piracy

So you don't condone piracy, but you enable it instead? Or am I missing something?

[alb]

Hi rwr,

rwr...@gmail.com wrote:
[]

> While I certainly do not condone piracy, and I believe Xilinx should
> be compensated for their hard work, sometimes it can be handy to run
> ISE without limitations on the range of targetable devices and without
> having to go through the rather annoying 30-day evaluation license
> generation.

just to get the nomenclature straight:

1. piracy: the act of reproducing someone's else (art) work without
permission

2. copyright infringement: unauthorized used of a copyrighted material.

3. license: set of permission granted by the licensor to the licensee to
use a product.

By doing what you are doing you are certainly not promoting piracy,
since there's no reproduction of any artwork in your 'advise'.

On the contrary you are suggesting you have more rights than the ones
the licensor (Xilinx) gave you in the license. (I recall you that you
accepted the license the very same moment you decided to use their
software).

The reason why Xilinx issues the license the way it does and copyrights
their products that way is because they consider that 'running ISE
without limitations' is affecting negatively their business and they
want to protect it.

If you really believe you have the rights to 'run ISE without
limitations' you can post your name and address so that any Xilinx
representative here on the group may get in touch with you and kindly
explain what are your rights and what are theirs. Or maybe you can
simply give them a call and see what they think.

That being said, I strongly discourage anyone in this group to follow
such practices and stand against such advices.

OTOH if the OP wants to work hard on a GPLed toolchain for fpgas in
order to really be able to *run it without limitations*, I'd be more
than happy to promote and contribute to that effort.

Al

[Tomas D.]

There were and there are tools to decrypt Xilinx and Altera IP cores, so
they become regular HDL files. I doubt nobody knew that in this group...

[Nikolaos Kavvadias]

Dear all,

agreeing with alb, this is a license breach issue and not promotion of pirating acts.

> By doing what you are doing you are certainly not promoting piracy,
> since there's no reproduction of any artwork in your 'advise'.
>
> On the contrary you are suggesting you have more rights than the ones
> the licensor (Xilinx) gave you in the license.

I agree; there is no other point to be made here; accepting a license for a licensable work is a binary decision.

> OTOH if the OP wants to work hard on a GPLed toolchain for fpgas in
> order to really be able to *run it without limitations*, I'd be more
> than happy to promote and contribute to that effort.

It would be great to see such an effort that many of us would contribute. If you are looking into a logic synthesis open-source project with a lot of potential, I would suggest YOSYS (http://clifford.at/yosys/) by Clifford Wolf. Clifford does a great job in filtering out multiple and contradicting user proposals and I think the project progresses well. On some aspects, it is already commercial-grade work.


Best regards
Nikolaos Kavvadias
http://www.nkavvadias.com

[KJ]

On Friday, November 21, 2014 6:32:52 PM UTC-5, Nikolaos Kavvadias wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> agreeing with alb, this is a license breach issue and not promotion of pirating acts.
>

Full definition of Piracy (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/piracy?show=0&t=1416666964)

1: an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2: robbery on the high seas
3
a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright

b : the illicit accessing of broadcast signals

Merriam-Webster's definition 3a of piracy pretty well fits what the OP says that he/she has done and is enabling others to do the same...all while claiming to not 'condone piracy'.

Kevin Jennings

[rickman]

You didn't give us the definition of "condone".

--

Rick

[KJ]

On Saturday, November 22, 2014 12:49:43 PM UTC-5, rickman wrote:
>
> You didn't give us the definition of "condone".
>
> --
>
> Rick

You're correct. My response was targeted to those with a level of intelligence to which you still aspire. Best of luck to you on your quest.

[alb]

Hi Kevin,

KJ <kkjen...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
[]

> 3 a : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or
> conception especially in infringement of a copyright

[]

> Merriam-Webster's definition 3a of piracy pretty well fits what the OP
> says that he/she has done and is enabling others to do the same...all
> while claiming to not 'condone piracy'.

I must admit that I've always only considered piracy as the act of
'copying/reproducing' without permission, hence not really applicable to
what the OP was doing.

But, in light of what you said and what I read through a deeper search
on the subject, piracy is also covering the 'use' without permission and
therefore covers license infringement:
http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Consumer+Software+Piracy

Not all countries though associate 'piracy' to the unauthorized use of
software as the OP described. For instance in Italy I haven't found
material related to such a intimate link between misuse and piracy [1].
In fact piracy is mostly associated to 'duplicating' illegally the
software/media (often related to file sharing and other practices that
cause financial damage to copyrights holders).

Al

[1] my search is by far not exhaustive and I'd be happy to be
disconfirmed by others.

[David Brown]

It doesn't really matter much what we call it - it is illegal, immoral
and unethical to use legally licensed software beyond the rights of the
licence. And it is illegal, immoral and unethical to help others do so.
It is up to the laws and courts of different countries or jurisdictions
to decide whether any particular case is a criminal offence or a civil
offence, but at a minimum it will be copyright infringement and breaking
a contract or licence.

However, as far as I am concerned, copyright infringement is not "theft"
or "stealing", as these terms require that the rightful owner loses
access to the "stolen" item. Similarly, it is not "piracy" since it is
not theft or criminal violence at sea. The use of these terms in
copyright infringement is designed to invoke an emotional response and
make the infringement seem far worse than it really is, and do not help
anyone.

[alb]

Hi Tomas,

Tomas D. <mai...@gmial.com> wrote:
> There were and there are tools to decrypt Xilinx and Altera IP cores, so
> they become regular HDL files. I doubt nobody knew that in this group...

how would you react if somebody opened your safe and got accesses to
your most valuable thoughts/ideas?

Imagine you do not have the means to protect your thoughts/ideas in a
safe manner and somebody strong enough and powerful enough can spoil
your weaknesses and use your thoughts/ideas to make profits.

Imagine your thoughts/ideas used against you to constraint your freedom.
Imagine your thoughts/ideas used against your people...

To make things straight, I do not care less of what Tomas D. does or
says, but I do care for those who might, one day, think that what Tomas
D. said today was not so bad in the end.

HTH somebody,

Al

[rickman]

"immoral"??? Really? You consider the "misuse" of FPGA development
software to be "immoral"? It is illegal by definition. I'm not sure I
consider it to be unethical in all cases even. There are times when I
can't use the stuff because of a license expiring and the licensing
process taking days. If I were to crack the license on a copy of the
free FPGA development software so I can get my work done while waiting
for a license file, I don't consider that to be either "immoral" or
"unethical".

--

Rick

[rickman]

On 11/24/2014 11:15 AM, alb wrote:
> Hi Tomas,

...snip...

> HTH somebody,

HTH?

--

Rick

[David Brown]

Well, that's a matter for personal opinion. Probably we all can think
of times when we have cheated on licences or abused copyright and which
we don't view as immoral or unethical - and we can all think of times
when other people have done so that we /do/ think is immoral or
unethical (I know that applies to me). In general, I would view
breaking code to gain free use of software that normally costs
significant amounts of money as unethical - but I am certainly not going
to judge someone who merely "bends" the rules a little to get their work
done, especially when the result is more sales for the supplier. There
is plenty of grey area here - but I think the person posting the crack
is well into the black area.

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

alb <al.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

(snip)

> I must admit that I've always only considered piracy as the act of
> 'copying/reproducing' without permission, hence not really applicable to
> what the OP was doing.

Not sure about the OP, but what do you call the case when you have
a license, but flexlm mistakenly believes that all are in use?

I have in the past known license managers to get confused, for
example when a machine crashes without releasing one.

-- glen

[alb]

Hi Rick,

rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:
[]
>> HTH somebody,
>
> HTH?

A little bit of hacker culture from the good ol'days, search in the
glossary and find the acronym for yourself
http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/

BTW GIYF!

Al

[rickman]

Thanks, but no thanks... I have more useless info than I care to
remember. Don't need to add any more.

--

Rick

[alb]

Hi Glen,

glen herrmannsfeldt <g...@ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
[]

>> I must admit that I've always only considered piracy as the act of
>> 'copying/reproducing' without permission, hence not really applicable to
>> what the OP was doing.
>
> Not sure about the OP, but what do you call the case when you have
> a license, but flexlm mistakenly believes that all are in use?

These types of 'malfunctions' will never be accepted as a justification
for cracking the license and/or the license server. It would be
equivalent to stealing a car because yours is temporary out of gas!

In nearly every license there's a clause of NO WARRANTY that you accept
when using the software and while the software provider is relatively
keen to solve 'major' problems, they might not be equally interested to
get you out of the mud because you screwed up.

We all know that s**t happens and when it happens your only legal choice
is to call them and try to get an answer.

License managers are far away from perfection as any other artifact.
Nevertheless they provide a sufficiently detailed debugging
infrastructure to spot the issue rather soon. In your bug report provide
the log files of your lmgrd (is *always* good practice to store logging
information from the server to a file).

Often the issue is on your side and it's handled by some call center
delocalized in Sumatra. Some times though your question might trigger a
patch.

> I have in the past known license managers to get confused, for
> example when a machine crashes without releasing one.

with flexlm you can use lmremove in those cases, there's still an issue
of 'linger time' of 30 minutes which may affect you, but depending on
how many of you are using the license server you can simply think about
restarting the flexlm which will spawn the vendor daemons and clear
their internal list of used licenses, causing all users to lose their
grants. Usually the license grant is regained as soon as the lmgrd is
restarted, but it may happen that the license module in the client
application has caused the application to quit in the meantime.

The FLEXlm UM is IMO quite easy to follow:
http://www.vcpc.univie.ac.at/information/software/pgi/flexuser/TOC.htm

If the software product and their licensing schemes do not suit you
well, instead of breaking the law and forging the contract you signed
when you bought the product, put more efforts in alternative products
with a licensing philosophy that suit you more.

As a customer we always have a choice and we should use it to send clear
messages to vendors. Unfortunately the EDA tools empire is highly
fortified and cluttered by millions of patents which eventually minimize
your available choice.

Don't forget though that one of the most powerful means the EDA vendors
have to stay afloat is through 'lock ins'. Even if you crack the license
but *use* their software, you'll spread it within your organization and
create consense, expertise and an infrastructure around that product
that would be difficult to get away from. EDA vendors know that and can
push this philosophy to the extreme, i.e. as long as you use their
software they won't care much if you've paid for it.

Al

[Tomas D.]

Hello Mr. alb,

> Imagine you do not have the means to protect your thoughts/ideas in a
> safe manner and somebody strong enough and powerful enough can spoil
> your weaknesses and use your thoughts/ideas to make profits.

If someone would tell me, that there's a weakness in my safe, I would do my
best to make it safer. You wouldn't do the same?

Anybody doesn't have to say the open code of my safe, as in this case, I
didn't tell the methods how to get the software hacked, but the word has
been spread for a long time now.

You don't think so?

[alb]

Hi Tomas,

Tomas D. <mai...@gmial.com> wrote:

[]

> If someone would tell me, that there's a weakness in my safe, I would do my
> best to make it safer. You wouldn't do the same?

I'd appreciate if somebody tells me that I have a weakness in my safer,
on the contrary I would certainly not be happy if the same guy posts a
message wide open on newsserver mirrored a gazillion times with my code
in big letters.

> Anybody doesn't have to say the open code of my safe, as in this case, I
> didn't tell the methods how to get the software hacked, but the word has
> been spread for a long time now.

This is actually what you did. You provided the exact sequence on how to
*crack* (not *hack*, see the difference here on the 4th paragraph:
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is)

> You don't think so?

No I don't.

Al

[alb]

Hi Tomas,

alb <al.b...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If someone would tell me, that there's a weakness in my safe, I would
>> do my best to make it safer. You wouldn't do the same?
>
> I'd appreciate if somebody tells me that I have a weakness in my
> safer, on the contrary I would certainly not be happy if the same guy
> posts a message wide open on newsserver mirrored a gazillion times
> with my code in big letters.

please disregard the previous message since for a threading issue I
thought I was replying to the OP. My apologies, I'll reply to your
message separately.

Al

[alb]

Hi Tomas,

Tomas D. <mai...@gmial.com> wrote:

>> Imagine you do not have the means to protect your thoughts/ideas in a
>> safe manner and somebody strong enough and powerful enough can spoil
>> your weaknesses and use your thoughts/ideas to make profits.
>
> If someone would tell me, that there's a weakness in my safe, I would do my
> best to make it safer. You wouldn't do the same?

If I find a weakness in somebody's safe I'd tell him. It would be up to
him to take the counter measures to make it safer.

> Anybody doesn't have to say the open code of my safe, as in this case, I
> didn't tell the methods how to get the software hacked, but the word has
> been spread for a long time now.

When it comes to security, the tipical approach is to reveal the bug
once is *fixed* in order not to expose the affected victim to a massive
attack. If you found a breach, by chance or because of your skills or
job, you should report it to Xilinx before the breach can be exploited
further.

> You don't think so?

I do not think that forging licenses, cracking software and stealing
artwork is ethical, but, as somebody pointed out earlier, ethics may
vary according to culture/beliefs/social environment. I am certainly
sure that those actions are *illegal*, more or less everywhere.

Al

[rickman]

I can't remember the exact context, but I recall a landmark case
(possibly in Europe) where the user was not able to copy or use licensed
software for some reason. The company was not able to help, possibly
because it was out of business or maybe the product was no longer
supported. The person cracked the key and used or copied the product as
he was otherwise allowed to do. Somehow this ended up in the courts and
they upheld his right to do what was needed in the way of reverse
engineering and work around to use the legally obtained product.

In the US there is a law specifically making it a crime to break
"encryption" on any product. It can be the most simple of cyphers but
if you break the cypher, you can go to jail, no matter if there was any
gain or even if the product was used improperly in any way. Pretty
bizarre if you ask me.

--

Rick

[Anders....@kapsi.spam.stop.fi.invalid]

rickman <gnu...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I can't remember the exact context, but I recall a landmark case
> (possibly in Europe) where the user was not able to copy or use licensed
> software for some reason. The company was not able to help, possibly
> because it was out of business or maybe the product was no longer
> supported. The person cracked the key and used or copied the product as
> he was otherwise allowed to do. Somehow this ended up in the courts and
> they upheld his right to do what was needed in the way of reverse
> engineering and work around to use the legally obtained product.

Finnish copyright law explicitly allows you to make modifications to
legally obtained computer software that are necessary to make it work
for its intended purpose. The legislation also explicitly states that
the prohibitions on circumventing effective technological copy
protection measures are not applied to computer software.

-a

[Tomas D.]

Hello alb,

> When it comes to security, the tipical approach is to reveal the bug
> once is *fixed* in order not to expose the affected victim to a massive
> attack. If you found a breach, by chance or because of your skills or
> job, you should report it to Xilinx before the breach can be exploited
> further.

they already know that for years, believe me. IP cores are not their
business. They're selling FPGAs.
OTOH looking at the source code is sometimes useful.