iOS Detecting Pirated Apps

[captcanuk]

Anyone know of an Apple sanctioned or unsanctioned mechanism for identifying if the current running app is pirated or not?

I'm not overly enthused about people pirating my apps (contemplating a C&D) but moreso, it is preventing me from putting out a web service enabled application because the cost of supporting pirated and non-pirated users will cost too much (especially true for a $.99 app I would be putting out). I don't want to increase the price just to break even and screw over my actual customers.

 

[forcesteeler]

Its a useless battle. People are going to find a way to crack your applications regardless. If a billion dollar company like Microsoft can't stop pirates! what makes you think you can?

Beside the Jailbreak population are only 7% of the overall Iphone population. Most of them were not going to buy your app anyways

 

[dukebound85]

piracy is a given with software. price and plan accordingly

 

[bnut]

If you can run it you can pirate it, most software protection systems end up crippling the software and harming legitimate customers with annoying restrictions or peculiarities, whereas pirates generally remove these crippling hacks to circumvent the protection systems. It only hurts legitimate customers, as dukebound85 said assume it will happen and adjust your business and payment model to account for it.

 

[forcesteeler]

If you can run it you can pirate it, most software protection systems end up crippling the software and harming legitimate customers with annoying restrictions or peculiarities, whereas pirates generally remove these crippling hacks to circumvent the protection systems. It only hurts legitimate customers, as dukebound85 said assume it will happen and adjust your business and payment model to account for it.

Also Most Software Protections are defeated by the same people that create it! To increase profits. My brother use to work for Macrovision.

 

[imPoddible]

piracy is a given with software. price and plan accordingly

Has anyone tried the Kali anti piracy solution: http://ripdev.com/kaliap

I wonder how effective this is?

imPoddible.

 

[return7]

one simple thing you can do is this but it's not a catch all BY ANY MEANS and someone will probably find another way to crack apps that doesn't require the signer id to be set (and might already have for that matter):

NSBundle *bundle = [NSBundle mainBundle];
NSDictionary *info = [bundle infoDictionary];
if ([info objectForKey: @"SignerIdentity"] != nil)
{
    //This key should never be in the plist so do something bad :D
}

 

[fishkorp]

Has anyone tried the Kali anti piracy solution: http://ripdev.com/kaliap

I wonder how effective this is?

imPoddible.

Based on what they charge, 95% of the developers would probably lose money using RipDev's solution.

The .plist check is probably the easiest to implement, but also probably easiest to defeat.

 

[caveman_uk]

Based on what they charge, 95% of the developers would probably lose money using RipDev's solution.

Looking at some of the quoted piracy rates for Apps then that's probably not the case.

 

[fishkorp]

Looking at some of the quoted piracy rates for Apps then that's probably not the case.

Most, not all, of the cases of piracy the person wouldn't have purchased the app in the first place. Something like a 99 cent stupid app, there's a good chance that the person pirating it would never buy it because it's stupid. But because it's free, they figure "what the hell?" and try it anyway. So unless your app is probably $5.99 or more and is rampantly pirated, I can't see their service being worth the money. Not to mention the fact you're sending your stuff to a 3rd party, particularly a hacker. Who knows what they might do with your code.

 

[caveman_uk]

Who knows what they might do with your code.

Such as what? Crack it? Distribute free copies of it? They could do that already if they wanted.