Defcon Demo Vs Full Game
Arlyne Doepner
All these are demos for games I have. If I try to install one, it installs the game, not the demo. In the list of activations, they don't appear. Going to support and searching for them tells me I don't have them in my library. But there they are.
Edit: if in Steam support it says I don't have them in my library, it means I can't ask for the game to be removed. In no place, in no way can I ask about it to Steam. So as Lyselfia did, the only solution is to hide them. It's silly but bugs me to have games hidden because The Matrix Steam had a glitch.
Update: now the DEFCON demo appears on my activation list, so I can remove it. I hope the rest of the demos will slowly appear. It's not anything big or worrysome, but imagine if the glitch was that 700 games with demos told the users that they have the demos but not the game they paid for. Update on the update removing the demo from the activation list still doesn't remove the game from my Steam client...
I see that I have the same thing going on
It seems that for some reason the packages we activated with our keys now include demos
Why that would happen for several different and unrelated games, I have no idea.
I kinda imagined that. But this seem to affect many unrelated games and the update history doesn't show adding a 2nd app anywhere. In fact your two examples were last updated the same day more than 8 years ago.
Also, if I had an app added, I should be able to remove it. But, I can't. I can't install it either. And, if I remember well, demos disappear when uninstalled. Using "download" on the demo on the product page still wants to install the full app. I'm ludicrously befuddled.
Curiously for DEFCON I have sub 242. If I go to that sub in SteamDB, it says I have both the game and demo. But if I go to for sub 156, which has both the game and the demo, it shows that I only have the game and not the demo.
Cunfosign.
Introversion's strategic "genocide-'em-up" Defcon is now available to buy off the Internet or in one of those boxes, and you can download a demo to celebrate. Or: to discover if you feel like buying it.
You can buy the game via Steam or Introversion's website, and you can grab the demo from Valve's download service or just use the regular Internet. It's only 58MB - and if you buy it that's how big the full download is, too.
According to them wot know, the demo consists of a rolling demonstration of the game, a tutorial, and a playable multiplayer bit with support for two players. The full game supports up to six of you humans.
I need the computer to disable all device inputs and the hard drive to be encrypted, so only this computer can run. I want to prevent the customer from accessing the computer while it works and prevent the option of removing the hard drive and using it on a different computer.
Check your laptop's BIOS at boot, look around for options like hard drive encryption or "ATA Hard Disk Lock" (not encryption, but I don't think most drives have any mechanism that would allow you to bypass the password).
The fact that it's Linux gives you some more flexibility. :) You can remove the usbhid.ko, hid.ko, and similar kernel modules from the system. Look through lsmod(8) output and remove anything that looks like it'd be useful for the trackpad or keyboard or nipple-mouse. Delete the firewire modules. Maybe even the serial and parallel modules. (If you're not using them, it won't hurt to be rid of them.)
You might also want to use a tool such as AppArmor, SElinux, TOMOYO, or SMACK. Any of these mandatory access control tools can prevent an application from escaping a well-defined set of privileges. As I've worked on the AppArmor system for a decade now, it's the one I know best and the one I'd recommend :) but any of these tools can help lock down every mechanism that your client can interact with the computer.
(To tell a small diversionary tale, we took an AppArmor-confined system to the DEFCON Capture The Flag contest for several years; one year required allowing users to telnet in as root with a specific password. AppArmor made it easy to confine the telnetd daemon, the shell it started, and then the programs that the 'scorebot' needed to run. We never won the CTF contests, but we never got rooted, either. We never needed to worry about physical attacks because everyone who was defending was known to us.)
Sure, you can make it more difficult for someone to gain unauthorized access. But beyond the most trivial and inexpensive measures, doing so is a complete waste of time and money. If someone really wants to get in, they will find a way to do so and you won't be able to stop them.
Not to mention they could reverse engineer your software without ever compromising the demo computer that you provide. I'm not sure if this falls under your definition of "hacking", but it probably should.
This is not a technology problem, it's a legal problem. You need to protect your software and your intellectual property with licenses and other contractual agreements. Get the customer to sign a non-disclosure agreement, if necessary. The best thing to do is to consult a lawyer, not a technologist.
As hinted at in the comment on the question, the correct device for accomplishing this is called a "contract". Write one up (or, better, hire a lawyer to write one up - you can probably get it done for a couple hundred dollars, which is a lot less than tamper-proof hardware would cost) detailing what they are and are not allowed to do with the demo unit and have them sign it as a condition of receiving said demo unit.
As long as we can protect the product in such a way that the customer will have to invest more money in the reverse engineering, than what the entire company is worth, that's a good enough protection for us.
We will protect the bios with a password. on the bios level, we'll limit boot to the HD and prevent connection of USB devices. This can be hacked by buying a back door code on the web for 30$ or tampering with a chip on the board. However, this will leave indications of tampering, which are quite visible.
We'll put physical indication (probably color silicon) on the HD, to see if the HD is removed from the computer. If they remove the HD or hack the bios, they will leave fingerprints that they won't be able to wipe.
We'll use Obfuscation tools on the Java code. Our product is quite complex, so Obfuscating it, will prevent any reverse engineering at reasonable cost or time frames.Please read: -05/01-qa-0509-jcrypt.htmland we'll use one the following toolsOpen Source tools: -source.net/open-source/obfuscatorsor DashO from
Once someone has physical access to a system, there's not much you can do about it. For starters its OS dependant - you could possibly use read only media to prevent the user from messing with the the system, and in the process of setting it up, set it to have the inputs unavailable - possibly using bartpe (for windows) or some manner of livecd - many methods allow you to make a bootable backup from a running system.
This way they can run with very limited privileges, be constantly monitored and the family jewels need never leave your vault. Even without knowing your platform, I am sure there are quite a number of remote access options that would suit; Teamviewer, LogMeIn or Remmina to name a few.
Once you give someone physical access to a machine, they can pull out the hard drive, make a copy of it, stuff it back in, and hack it at their leisure. Cody is correct that this problem is not really solvable.
One work-around is to have the real program running on a remote demo computer. Have your client's demo computer connect to it. This will make your application look less responsive, so it may hurt sales :/
This is a very tricky problem. I have an off-the-wall idea that I am just going to throw out there, since it might be a better solution than physically damaging the computer. You could have this software product of yours setup as a linux screen-saver. Then set the time-out to really small that way if a user tries to interact with the computer a login screen will appear and they will be SOL, but application should resume after time-out for screensaver. To get past your hard-drive encryption problem, The only solution I can really think of here is that if you have hardware encryption on the motherboard of the laptop it could be so that only THAT specific laptop can access the hard-drive. You will have to check your system BIOS to see if you have that feature. other than that I use truecrypt.org for all of my (and my works) encryption needs, but that all usually requires a password entry. Figured I would suggest it all the same though. If I think of something more I will let you know, good luck ;)
Have you considered enabling the CPU ID in BIOS and then since you control the code, insert appropriate check into your code at periodic areas. During program start - check CPU ID, if bad, abort and overwrite the program. During program run - check CPU ID, if bad, abort and overwrite program...
You could open the laptop and disable the keyboard and trackpad by unplugging the physical connectors.
You would have to do this once everything else was configured. USB devices disabled, boot from CD/DVD disabled etc. This way once you get the computer back yuo can simply open it up, re-connect the trackpad and keyboard and set everything back to normal and the computer will be fully usable again.
If you were really concerned you could use security screws / security tape to prevent him opening the laptop himself.
Applications run as if installed on your potential customer's machine; however very little hardware, and certainly NOT your software needs to be installed on the machine that's going to leave your hands.
If you don't trust this person, do not hand them your idea and cross your fingers. Even if you end up suing for copyright infringement, or theft, the damage is already done - but it seems you already feel that way.
WASHINGTON, August 11, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Virtru, a global leader in data protection, today announced its upcoming demonstration of SecureCycle at DEF CON 30 in Las Vegas. SecureCycle is a prototype period tracking application built on OpenTDF, an open source project that gives software developers an easy way to incorporate end-to-end data encryption and privacy controls into their applications.
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