WINGATE PIRACY PROTECTION...

[mcit]

I have come across an interesting feature that I am unsure about.

I have a client who has been running wingate for years, he recently allowed another engineer to perform an upgrade on his server. The engineer supplied a new version of Wingate 5.2.3 and charged for it accordingly.
All of this occured around 2 weeks ago.

Yesterday the client phoned me saying that all internet access had ceased and he unable to continue business operations.

When I checked wingate, the engine was stopped and after restarting I was confronted with the message:

Illeagal Wingate Licence Detected. To continue the use of this product you must purcahse a licence from qbik.com. [This is not the exact wording but the basic drift of it]

I am assuming that this means that the upgraded wingate that this other technician installed was in fact, not a licenced copy, but a pirate copy.

I am assuming that because it worked initially [just enough time for him to get paid and vanish] that the wingate engine must somehow contact the qbik database and check to see if it is indeed a valid licence.

This being said, why is it that the firewall on the server did not detect and stop the communication from taking place? Does it transfer the information through a common port such as the HTTP or SOCKS port, to avoid detection?

Or in future for my other clients, is there a specific port that I should leave open on the firewall so that the engine may communicate with Qbik in order to verify if it's licence is genuine?

Thanks.

[adrien]

Hi

WinGate uses DNS for this check, so there are no holes to open etc.

It is possible that the engineer didn't even enter a new key, and that the old key running in the previous version was cracked, since in version 5 we allowed earlier version keys to operate (albeit usually with restricted functionality).

Adrien