The record of breaking the ``copy protection dongle'' from 40 years ago continues, a dongle is required to compile, but it can be canceled with only a 4-byte patch - GIGAZINE

Sometimes protection hardware such as USB dongles is not used to prevent software copying. Dmitry Brandt, who works as a software engineer at the Wikimedia Foundation, succeeded in removing the copy protection dongle that was used 40 years ago and summarized the process in a blog article.

Disabling 40-year-old copy protection dongles – Dmitry Brandt
https://dmitrybrant.com/2026/02/01/defeating-a-40-year-old-copy-protection-dongle

Mr. Brandt is the person in charge of developing the Android version of Wikipedia at the Wikimedia Foundation.digital forensicsWe also develop software for data recovery. Mr. Brandt was asked by a friend who runs an accounting firm to help modernize the system.

At an accounting firm,RPGIn addition, the following copy protection dongle needed to be connected to the PC to run the software.

Mr. Brandt created a disk image of the accounting firm’s Windows 98-equipped PC, ran it carefully, and ultimately tried to export the data of the accounting software. However, the Exp required the connection of a copy protection dongle. Brandt began analyzing the system to perform various operations without using a physical copy protection dongle. As a result, it was discovered that the RPG II compiler and software source code from the software development company “Software West Inc.” were stored on the PC.

Unfortunately, the compiler requires a copy protection dongle to be connected, and if the dongle is not connected, a warning message saying “No dongle, no edit!” will be displayed even when the compiler is started.

Therefore, Mr. Brandt developed a decompiling tool.recordAs a result, it turned out that the copy protection dongle was just sending a constant value of “7606h”.

Mr. Brandt created a patch to insert ‘7606h’ in place of the copy protection dongle and successfully started the compiler. Brandt commented, “I think this copy protection is too simple to be able to remove it with a 4-byte patch.”

Mr. Brandt regards Software West Inc.’s RPG II compiler as a digital heritage, and plans to release it with personal information removed.

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