The problem
HiveCode is becoming a family of two hundred utilities on Windows, Android and the web, each of which needs trials, editions, keys, seats, renewals, offline use, refunds and support, and the first version of the platform (v0.6.0: Free, Trial, Pro and Site editions, ES256 tokens, manual keys from the admin panel) was built for one app. Machine identity is the hard part: Windows' own identifiers are copied wholesale when a vendor clones one installation onto a shelf of laptops without generalising it, so a hundred machines share one MachineGuid and SID and look like one pirate or one honest customer; naive hardware IDs break when a disk is replaced and survive when a VM is copied; and the licensing products that solve this (Keygen, Cryptlex, LicenseSpring, Thales Sentinel) charge per activation or per month for a problem we will have across hundreds of products.
Features
- One account, every app: a product registry on the platform where each utility is registered once (id, editions, features, prices, trial length, platforms) and the shared SDK (.NET for Windows, Kotlin for Android, a small JavaScript client for the web) handles sign-in, trial, activation, feature flags, grace periods and renewal with the same signed token format; suite bundles and 'all apps' licences are just products that grant others
- New users without friction: e-mail magic link or passkey, a trial that starts on first run with no card, purchase through the merchant of record (Paddle or Stripe) that issues the key automatically, and an account page where the user sees every app, every machine, moves a licence to a new PC by deactivating the old one, and recovers keys by e-mail; administrators issue bulk and education keys, MSP and reseller keys, and seats for a site
- Machine identity that is fair: a weighted fingerprint (TPM endorsement and attestation identity where present, motherboard and BIOS serials, CPU identity, system disk serial, network adapters, Windows MachineGuid and installation id, hypervisor markers) scored so a replaced disk or a new network card stays the same machine and a copied VM or a cloned image does not; the licence token is bound to a key pair the TPM (or, without a TPM, the platform's DPAPI-NG store) generates and never exports, so a copied disk image cannot carry a working activation
- Clone and duplicate detection: identical MachineGuid, SID, installation id or WSUS client id seen from different fingerprints means a cloned Windows installation; identical complete fingerprints seen from different networks at the same time mean a copied VM or a shared key; token replay and clock rollback are caught with monotonic counters and server time; each case is classified (cloned-by-vendor, copied VM, shared key, honest hardware change) and handled differently
- Vendor-cloned Windows repaired, not punished: when a customer's PC is one of many with the same Windows identity, the engine mints its own per-install identity so the customer activates normally, then offers Clone Repair through Licence & Activation Checker and Windows Repair Center: regenerate the MachineGuid and WSUS id, explain the SID situation honestly (Microsoft supports duplicate SIDs on standalone PCs; domain join and some activation paths do not), check whether the firmware OEM key activates Windows and tell the customer what to ask the vendor for if it does not
- Piracy made visible and unprofitable without hurting customers: signed short-lived tokens refreshed online with a generous offline grace, server-side issuance only, revocation lists, leak detection (one key on many machines throttles new activations and tells the owner rather than bricking anyone), binary integrity checks through Authenticode and token-bound build hashes, a graceful fall-back to the Free edition when something is tampered, offline activation by file exchange for air-gapped sites, and no kernel drivers, no dongles, no nag screens
- Built for two hundred apps: feature flags per edition evaluated locally from the token, usage and error telemetry that is opt-in and tied to the product registry, fraud and clone alerts through the existing Telegram alerts, dashboards per product (trials, conversions, activations, clones, refunds), a test harness with the in-memory licence store every app's demo mode already uses, and a published protocol version so old apps keep working when the platform moves
How it works
Identity
- Fingerprint components hashed before they leave the machine; raw serials never stored on the platform
- TPM 2.0 key pair with attestation where the firmware allows; DPAPI-NG fallback with a lower trust score and a lower concurrent-machine allowance
- Scoring with thresholds: same-machine when the weighted match is above 70 %, with the components that changed listed for support
- Hypervisor and clone markers: VM generation id, duplicate Windows ids, identical fingerprints across networks
Tokens and offline
- ES256 tokens as today, with product, edition, features, machine key id, build hash and expiry; refreshed daily, valid offline for 30 days (Site: 90), then Free
- Monotonic counter and server time to defeat clock rollback and replay; revocation list pushed with each refresh
- Offline activation: request file from the app, response file from the account page or an administrator, for air-gapped machines
Commerce and accounts
- Merchant of record (Paddle or Stripe with tax) issues keys through a webhook; refunds revoke; renewals extend; bundles grant member products
- Account page: apps, machines, seats, transfers, invoices, key recovery; administrators: bulk keys, education, MSP, resellers, manual grants, audit
- Pricing and editions per product in the registry; Free, Trial, Pro, Site and MSP as the standard ladder, with product-specific extras
Platform scale
- Product registry and SDKs; protocol versioning; PostgreSQL with migrations as today; the single Droplet for now with a stateless API ready for a second region
- Fraud, clone and leak alerts to Telegram; per-product dashboards; opt-in telemetry through the same client
- Documentation for adding an app: register the product, add the SDK, declare features, ship
Who it is for
Small business buying ten PCs
A shelf of cloned laptops
All ten share one Windows identity from the vendor. Each activates normally on its own TPM-held key; Clone Repair regenerates the Windows ids on each and the report tells the owner which ones the vendor must relicense.
Pro customer
The new disk
System drive replaced; the fingerprint still scores 82 % and the TPM key is unchanged, so nothing happens, which is the point.
Support
The shared key
One Pro key appears on 40 machines in three countries in a week; new activations are throttled, the owner is e-mailed, and the dashboard shows the leak without any paying customer losing access.
HiveCode developer
App number 201
Registering the product, adding the SDK and declaring three features takes an hour; trials, keys, bundles, offline tokens and fraud alerts come for free.
Benefits
- One account and one key format for every HiveCode app
- Clones, copies and shared keys told apart from honest hardware changes
- New users on a trial in a minute, buying without support tickets
Built to be trusted
- A licence is never silently revoked; every enforcement step is explained in the app and recoverable from the account page
- Honest hardware changes never cost a customer an activation; support sees which components changed
- Raw hardware identifiers never leave the machine; only hashes do
- Tampering degrades to Free, never to a broken app or a lost document
Good to know
No licensing scheme stops a determined cracker, and this one does not claim to: it makes the honest path effortless, the leaks visible and the losses small, without the dongles, drivers and nag screens that punish paying customers. TPM binding needs a TPM 2.0 and firmware that exposes it; older PCs fall back to a software-protected key with a lower trust score. Clone Repair fixes our identity and Windows' MachineGuid and WSUS ids; it cannot fix a vendor's unlicensed Windows, only explain it and what to ask for. Merchant-of-record fees, the signing identity and the second region are open decisions carried from v0.6.0.
Under the hood
For technical readers
- HiveCode.Licensing.Shared / HiveCode.Licensing / HiveCode.Platform (ASP.NET Core, EF Core, PostgreSQL, Razor admin, Docker and Caddy on the Droplet)
- TPM 2.0 via the Platform Crypto Provider; DPAPI-NG fallback; WMI and SMBIOS for fingerprint components
- ES256 tokens, revocation lists, monotonic counters; Authenticode
- Paddle or Stripe webhooks; magic links and passkeys; Telegram alerts; Kotlin and JavaScript SDKs