CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#securitywmiusb-drive
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Reputation: 5390

How restrict an application to run only from a known USB flash drive?

I need an application to run only from a specific USB flash drive. I made some test with the WMI Win32_Diskdrive class and the PNPdeviceID property. It is a very good idea to enroll the application into a license server (web services) with this data, but I'm searching for a second method to reenforce this one in order to make the process harder to break.

I was thinking to create a second little hidden partition in the drive and locate in it as a name the serial obteined by the PNPdeviceID or other information. Any other idea, method or suggestion is accepted.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I already know a unique ID from the USB flash drive and the application can check if the Interfacetype property is "USB". I´m enrolling the application with a hash of the PNPDeviceID in a web-services suported licence manager. I'm searching for an additional second validation method.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5205

Answers (2)

Thomas Levesque
Thomas Levesque

Reputation: 292425

You can check the type of drive from which the program is running :

string path = Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainModule.FileName;
FileInfo fileInfo = new FileInfo(path);
string driveRoot = fileInfo.Directory.Root.Name;
DriveInfo driveInfo = new DriveInfo(driveRoot);
if (driveInfo.DriveType != DriveType.Removable)
{
    MessageBox.Show("Must run from removable drive");
    Application.Exit();
}

Upvotes: 1

David
David

Reputation: 2174

You can check the volume serial number, which will catch casual copying to a newly formatted volume, but it won't detect full byte-exact volume copies.
To protect software by accessing harddisk serial no
Any faster method to get Volume Serial number?

Upvotes: 1

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