WALTHAM, Mass. - (Business Wire)
V.i. Laboratories, Inc. (
“V.i. Labs
”), a provider of software protection solutions for securing high-value and mission-critical applications, issued a report revealing that piracy groups are fully exploiting security gaps in the common licensing mechanisms used in electronic design automation (EDA), computer-aided design (CAD), and product lifecycle management (PLM) software to produce counterfeit versions of these high-priced applications.
In particular, the piracy groups TBE (the Bitter End), LZ0 (LineZero0), oDDity, and Zero Waiting Time (ZWT) pose significant threats. Because of the well-organized nature of these groups and their relationships with suppliers embedded in the software vendor operations, some of these piracy organizations are able to issue an average of 500 crack releases per year.
V.i. Labs evaluated 17 leading EDA and PLM vendors, including Agilent, ANSYS, Autodesk, Cadence Design Systems, Synopsis, Dassault, The MathWorks, Mentor Graphics, National Instruments, PTC, Solidworks, and UGS/Siemens, and discovered nearly 1,000 crack releases in the last three years alone, with 79 percent of those being PLM or CAD-related, and 21 percent being EDA-related. These statistics suggest that disabling licensing mechanisms within these titles has become more scripting- and signature-based, with little reverse engineering required. In addition, the groups focused on specialized software like EDA and PLM, indicating a criminal sponsorship to meet the demand of manufacturing businesses within emerging markets.
“The sheer volume and availability of crack releases within these industry sectors suggest a high demand for specialized applications by businesses engaged in manufacturing and designing products,” said Victor DeMarines, vice president of Products, V.i. Labs. “Unlike consumer-based software, these titles are often used by companies that can and should be purchasing licenses.”
V.i. Labs further analyzed several major releases of PLM vendors and determined an average Time To Crack (TTC) metric. TTC represents the point in time where the piracy group has produced a quality crack release of a vendor’s new software version. The average TTC for PLM vendors was 30 days. The fact that these vendors share the same license management framework plays a significant role in the piracy groups’ ability to leverage one vulnerability across multiple vendors.
The research was conducted using Vi Labs’ professional services and its partnership with Internet Crimes Group. Additional information and methodology can be found on Vi Labs’ blog, Code Confidential: http://vilabs.typepad.com/vilabs/2008/07/initial-analysi.html
About V.i. Laboratories (V.i. Labs)
V.i. Labs provides software protection solutions that protect against the misappropriation and theft of intellectual property resident in software applications. Through V.i. Labs’ patented technology, software vendors, embedded system providers, enterprise organizations and government agencies are able to easily secure their software against the threat of piracy, tampering and theft, independent of where the applications are distributed. V.i. Labs is privately held and is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. For more information please visit: www.vilabs.com.
©2008 V.i. Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. V.i. Labs, the V.i. Labs logo, and CodeArmor are trademarks or registered trademarks of V.i. Laboratories, Inc. All other product and brand names herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
V.i. Labs
Michael Goff, 781-398-3451
mgoff@vilabs.com
or
PAN Communications
Gene Carozza/Susan Lloyd, 978-474-1900
vilaboratories@pancomm.com
