sticksbs

Hello all,

The little program I'm working on right now needs to have some kind of serial protection. Basically what I'm doing is based on the username there is a specific serial no. that is gererated (using Vignere algorithm --> not really sure of another way to generate a unique serial no. based on the username) --> Open to suggestions on this too.

In any case the question I really need help with is how safe is it to simply store the username and serial no. using the savesettings option. Or is it really necessary (for security or any other reason) to be using the advapi32.dll functions to be doing registry access. --> I'm not to familar with how to use these, so if it's okay to use the savesettings and getsettings options I would rather use that, unless it is encourged not to use that for my purposes.

Thanks.

OnErr0r

Safe is a relative term when it comes hiding things from people. Its all a matter of how much trouble they're going to go to in order to avoid paying. This is probably directly proportional to the cost of the software.

SaveSetting/GetSetting use this location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings

Using registry API will allow you to use some other location of your own choosing. Will that help? Maybe.

sticksbs

Yep it is relative, and honestly to me and in terms of my program I guess I don't really need to make it too safe, it's a small little program for a very small group of users (not meant for everyday computer users).

In any case, it just seems a more common to be saving stuff to the HKEY_Current_User area (I was just wondering if that was for a specific reason, security or something.)

Also if anyone knows of any good tutorials on how to implement some decent security (serial protection.)
--> That would be better than my way, which is simply ask for the user's first name and last name, then use the Vignere code with a password of my own, then I'd appreciate some links to help me out.

Thanks