cpw%sneezy@LANL.GOV (C. Philip Wood) (12/01/89)
Is there a IAB policy which might relate to the use of Well Known Service (WKS) numbers or Internet ports for Relatively Unknown Services (RUS) such as PC-NFS. There is an IBM-PS/280 on our network that is shipping 14 bytes of text in a UDP packet directed to WKS 9, the discard service. Example data: PC-NFS04080B65 PC-NFS0415AE76 What might these hosts be doing? Would they like a reply? I kind of doubt it. Phil Wood, cpw@lanl.gov
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (12/01/89)
Philip, What you're probably seeing is a very disgusting habit that seems to be developing among purveyers of commercial network products. They broadcast their license numbers in an effort to prevent users from copying their software and using multiple copies simultaneously on a local network. Some broadcast their licenses continuously every few seconds in an effort to avoid people partitioning their networks, starting up copies of the same program on isolated sections of the network and then rejoining the network ... I shit you not. This is a particularly revolting technique of copy protection since these licenses are encapsulated in broadcast packets that interrupt every host on the network. Since we have a flat network of over 2000 hosts here at LLNL, the potential disruption is dramatic for us. We told the manufacturers that we strongly disagree with their practice, have suggested that they register a multicast address and use that, and have threatened to install filters for their stupid packets. This last is a completely empty threat since the bridges we have (DEC LanBridge 100s) don't support this kind of packet filtering, we don't have money to buy new bridges, and even if we did have, the administrative effort needed to maintain all the filters is more time than we can afford. I can say that if we (our network support group) learns that a product uses this technique, we will advertise it as a prohibited product on our network. We just can't afford to have our network distroyed by a few companies who prefer to invest their time in stupid copy protection schemes rather than in improving their product and support, thereby making it unprofitable to copy their product. (By copying such a product you'd still be out the documentation, support, etc.) Casey
CSYSMAS@OAC.UCLA.EDU (Michael Stein) (12/02/89)
> We told the manufacturers that we strongly disagree with their > practice, have suggested that they register a multicast address > and use that, and have threatened to install filters for their > stupid packets. Multicast won't help on Token Ring, it maps to broadcast... I think the ONLY solution is to not allow those packages on the network...
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (12/02/89)
As an expansion and follow up of my mention of "multicast" is my last note, I offer the following: I request that companies who currently use ``Broadcasted License Numbers'' (BLN) as a product copy protection scheme, use a multicast address instead of the broadcast address. The merits or demerits of doing license checking are somewhat political. The obnoxiousness of interrupting every other host on the network regardless of manufacture just to check one manufacturer's license is untenable and unjustifiable. I would suggest either registering a special multicast address for each company's product or better yet, register a general ``License Multicast Address'' (LMA) that all companies could use for such purposes. That would encourage all companies interested in doing BLN to do it with the LMA. The fact that all these companies' products would be interrupting each other left and right can only be counted as a feature ... Perhaps the resulting slowness of such products would form a market force that would select for products that concentrated their anti-copying efforts on quality of product and service rather that algorithmic means. Perhaps we could even get this into the Host Requirements RFC as an addendum ... :-) Casey
casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) (12/02/89)
This from an unnamed source since I don't know if s/he wants to be credited/blamed: | Why not build a "discard server" which listens for broadcast discard | packets of that form and reflects them back at the discard port of the | sender, thus causing a license collision, disabling the product.... | | Needless to say, you only want one of these on a network :-) Hee hee. I really like this idea. I'd get in all sorts of trouble, but it would almost be worth it ... :-) Obviously any such Anti-License Server would have to be programmed to handle all the other similar schemes running around ... (For example SCO's XENIX TCP/IP runtime broadcasts packets to UDP port 60000 every thirty seconds. (And yes, we've complained that 60000 isn't registered. They should obviously use the [currently nonexistant] License Multicast Address (LMA) to UDP port 9.)) Casey
cpw%sneezy@LANL.GOV (C. Philip Wood) (12/04/89)
Some time soon we will begin charging for network traffic. It would seem only fair to pass the charges on to the vendors for these nefarious packets. And, the packets are already labeled to boot! Let's see, 1 cent a packet times 1000 hosts that receive the junk packet. That's 10 bucks per "protected" copy for a oneshot. Now, let's assume that 100 persons were foolish enough to buy this protected product. That's one thousand bucks a day. Now finally, let's assume that these products ship this periodically just to make sure no one is stealing their product. (Of course this only works on a single, link level network, IP defeats the protection scheme.) How about once every minute to be really safe. That comes to hmmm let's see 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day... Could that be One million four hundred and forty thousand dollars charged to the vendor per day for 100 copies of their software at just one site? Hmmm, What does that come to a year? And how many copies of PC-NFS are there out there? Phil Wood, cpw@lanl.gov
warner@twg.com (Warner Losh) (12/04/89)
In article <40184@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> casey@gauss.llnl.gov (Casey Leedom) writes: > Perhaps we could even get this into the Host Requirements RFC as an >addendum ... :-) Better yet, we should make the practice a MUST NOT in the Host Requirements RFC. It is totally bogus and doesn't buy the company that is doing the copy protection anything. Don't broadcast packets cause ARP wars anyway? At least on networks that have older networking software? I'd hate to see a ARP war (aka net meltdown) that could be traced to this practice. Denial of service law suits can be expensive..... Warner Losh warner@twg.com These are my own opinions. -- -- Warner Losh warner@twg.com (formerly warner@hydrovax.nmt.edu) Is this nightmare black, or are the windows painted? My views and spelling are my own. Only the letters have been changed.