CD Key Security

Gamer asks about ‘banning by cd key’:

I was just wondering what kind of protection is likely to be in place for our cd keys? Please correct me if I’m wrong with my assumption.

We all know that a DM can ban somebody based on their CD key. Therefore the DM knows what your key is. A malicious DM could then use that key to play on other servers and perhaps be banned which would stop the original owner of the key from playing on those servers even though they had done nothing wrong.

Right, unfortunately too many panic when they hear “CD keys can be banned” ;-). They aren’t talking about using the actual code used for copy protection but rather a unique “public key” generated using that code. So, your copy of NWN will respond to the key query differently from everyone else and no one can use your public key to fake your private code. Read the short articles at these links for a brief overview of this type of keying-

http://www.cypost.com/encr_ppkeys.html

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/itweek/brief/1998/21/encryption/publickey.html

Cord Grimwinder-8d
Interplaygames.com Moderator