MATLAB codes with a network licensing

Dear colleagues,

My question is following:

Let's assume one would like to distribute protected MATLAB scripts (p-files) that can be executed only if the positive answer is received from a server (specified e.g. with an IP-address), i.e. sort of a network license.

Could it be possible to implement with reasonable efforts?

Have a nice day!

[Rik]

if it can be done with an m-file, it can be done with a p-file. At least that is my understanding of it.

[Svyatoslav Kharitonov]

Dear Rik,

Technically, yes, you are correct.

However, practically it does not have any sense, because m-file shows the actual code (which you would like to hide and protect).

[Rik]

What I meant was that it is actually not really relevant to know you want to put it in a p-file, because that is a trivial step compared to the trouble you need to go to in order to get something like this working. Like Guillaume said, it will be very difficult to make. General rule of thumb: protecting software is at least an order of magnitude more difficult than cracking it. So asking 'could it be possible to implement with reasonable efforts' is a much too large/vague question.

I second Guillaume's suggestion of getting help from a company that sells this kind of protection as a product. It may or may not be relatively cheap, but it will be cheaper than your time, which you probably prefer spending on improving/selling your project itself, instead of the anti-piracy measures.

Answer 1

[Guillaume]

Yes, it can be easily implemented (in matlab or any other language). It can also be trivially defeated by capturing the network packets when connected to the server and replaying them when not. You possibly could make it more secure by implementing some timestamped challenge but I suspect it would still have some security holes if you implemented that yourself. If it's important to you, you would probably be better off buying a commercial licensing product (and even these get cracked)

[Walter Roberson]

See the discussion at https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/437002-anti-piracy-means#comment_653762