Step 2.1: Creating a new protected application

At the first stage we made several simple apps to test the API of the licensing system. Now, on the second stage we’ll create just one application. It will also be a console app with the foo() function working only in the registered version. Here is the code of our test application:

#include <windows.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include "VMProtectSDK.h"

#define PRINT_HELPER(state, flag) if (state & flag) printf("%s ", #flag)
void print_state(INT state)
{
        if (state == 0)
        {
                printf("state = 0\n");
                return;
        }

        printf("state = ");
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_CORRUPTED);
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_INVALID);
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_BLACKLISTED);
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_DATE_EXPIRED);
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_RUNNING_TIME_OVER);
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_BAD_HWID);
        PRINT_HELPER(state, SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_MAX_BUILD_EXPIRED);
        printf("\n");
}

char *read_serial(const char *fname)
{
        FILE *f;
        if (0 != fopen_s(&f, fname, "rb")) return NULL;
        fseek(f, 0, SEEK_END);
        int s = ftell(f);
        fseek(f, 0, SEEK_SET);
        char *buf = new char[s + 1];
        fread(buf, s, 1, f);
        buf[s] = 0;
        fclose(f);
        return buf;
}

// The foo() method is very short, but we need it to be an individual function
// so we asked the compiler to not compile it inline
__declspec(noinline) void foo()
{
        printf("I'm foo!\n");
}

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
        char *serial = read_serial("serial.txt");
        int res = VMProtectSetSerialNumber(serial);
        delete [] serial;
        if (res)
        {
                printf("serial number is bad\n");
                print_state(res);
                return 0;
        }
        printf("serial number is correct, calling foo()\n");
        foo();
        printf("done\n");
        return 0;
}

Compile the program without the debug information, but in the linker settings we enable creating of the MAP-file – we will need it to work with VMProtect. After we run the program, we should see the following text:

serial number is bad
state = SERIAL_STATE_FLAG_INVALID

Currently, the licensing system still works in the test mode, because the file wasn’t processed by VMProtect and doesn’t contain a licensing module in it. On the next step we will create a VMProtect project and will try to protect our application.

What is VMProtect?

Step 2.1: Creating a new protected application