Tagès: Difference between revisions

TAGES SA

Genre	DRM and Copy Protection
Headquarters	Valbonne , France
Key people	Vincent Lefebvre

TAGES (Tagès) is a software Copy Protection brand, jointly developed, at first, by MPO and the Thales Group (formerly known as Thomson-CSF). The work on the protection initially began in 1999, and it is being developed in Valbonne, a village in the southeastern France.

The name 'Tages' originates in the Etruscan mythology, where it functions as the Latin spelling for an alias of a minor deity, Tarchies.

The first software product to be protected by TAGES was a PC game, MotoRacer 3, developed by Delphine Software (DSI) and released in 2001. This marked the first sale of the TAGES protection system.

In 2003, an independent company, TAGES SA, was formed. The company focuses on the development of Copy Protection and Digital Rights Management systems, and is now the sole vendor of the TAGES copy protection system.

The TAGES copy protection is compatible with multiple versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and is employed on CD and DVD discs. One of the main strengths of TAGES resides in the implementation of a "Secure Area" on a physical medium, which renders the production a perfect copy of a TAGES protected disc, utilizing modern hardware, a next-to-impossible task. Additionally, a set of Anti-Cracking instruments is being provided with the protection system (such as TAGESCAP and TAGES APIs). This makes the reverse-engineering of TAGES protected applications a difficult and time-consuming task.

Protection strategies

As mentioned previously in this article, TAGES employs several techniques in order to combat software piracy. These techniques span over three main areas of interest (due to which reason, TAGES SA often describes its product as "The AAA Copy Protection System"):

Circumvention of the protection by means of reverse-engineering

TAGES offers two strategies to resist the reverse-engineering and cracking of TAGES-protected software:

• TAGESCAP - A binary wrapper which is applied to the software application's executable file and requires no changes to the source code of the application. It provides the encryption of the protected product's executable file(s), and the protection of the application against debugging, disassembly, reverse-engineering, and other forms of analysis. The TAGESCAP strategy suits a situation where the personnel in charge of safeguarding the software product against piracy has no access to the software's source code, or where the developer is not interested in introducing any protection-related changes to the software's source code. TAGESCAP thus makes it possible to protect an application without making any modifications to its source code, or without even having any access to it. This, however, has the drawback of restricting the authentication only to one single check, which will be carried out at the start-up of the protected application.

• TAGES APIs - A set of instruments allowing the developer to seamlessly work with the Secure Area which TAGES provides; not only it enables the storage of sensitive information (such as encryption and decryption keys, certificates, et al) within the Secure Area, but it also enables the developer to implement a fully customized set of "protection triggers", potentially appearing at any stage of the protected application's execution phase. For instance, should a non-authentic copy of a protected product be detected, the developer of a software product can decide upon the actions to be taken under such circumstances, such as electing to silently degrade some aspects of the product's functionality. This scenario is evident in an hypothetical example where should a protected computer car racing game detect a piracy attempt, it will begin to gradually drop the speed of the driven vehicle, and degrade its responsiveness to the player's actions. The player could then be invited to purchase a licensed version of the game, and play it without encountering such prepense anomalies. Notably, a developer could specify that an explicitly restricted version of the protected application (such as a demo version) will be launched, should the carrier be identified as counterfeit. The TAGES APIs feature, however, requires modifications and additions to the source code of the to-be protected application.

TAGES allows the combination of the two strategies for a given project, in order to increase the strength and security of the protection.

Emulation of a protected carrier's security measures

TAGES SA claims that the nature of their product makes it extremely difficult to perform all the required tasks for the successful emulation of the security measures present on an original carrier. It is noteworthy that the application of the TAGES APIs can be extended to cover this scenario as well.

There is, however, a commercial disc emulator software package which, at the time of this writing (December, 2006), succeeds in creating working disc images of TAGES protected media, and then successfully playing back the created disc images.

RAW copying, "Cloning" of a protected carrier

TAGES SA claims that the nature of their product, and the structuring of the Secure Area, makes it extremely difficult to produce a working copy of a protected disc.

In 2004, there was limited success in the duplication of TAGES protected discs, using a method which was initially presented by "Michael Spath", a moderator at CD Freaks; The copies which were produced by means of this method passed the TAGES security checks, however, the technique employed by this method was not exhaustive, and was virtually eliminated with the arrival of an updated TAGES version, as evident from a statement which TAGES SA had subsequently released (unfortunately, the TAGES web site was updated, removing any references to the statement in question):

"Our commitment to offer 100% resistance to 1:1 copy is more than ever confirmed. To make it definitely clear to everyone, an already implemented version of TAGES™, with a slight modification of one API, clearly repels copies right from the beginning, making the Spath method void whatever the improvement he may wish to add."

"The Spath method is incomplete and already a thing of the past."

And, according to a post by a TAGES SA employee, going by the alias of "Tanith", at the "Club CD Freaks" forums:

"We do NOT consider the spath method as a threat: if you don't understand what we have written, then in few words, we consider it as a spathetic :) attempt!" [1]

Device drivers and stability

As with most optical disc-based copy protection systems (such as SafeDisc, StarForce, et al), TAGES installs its own device drivers as a part of the copy protection system. The TAGES device drivers are installed on the first launch of any TAGES-protected application. However, at the time of this writing (December, 2006), should one wish to run a TAGES-protected application on the 64-bit editions of Windows Vista, he or she will have to select the "Disable Driver Signature Enforcement" option, after pressing F8 at system boot time.

Uninstallation of the TAGES device drivers

TAGES SA provides an official, standalone, device drivers installation and uninstallation program. This program functions as a toggle; once the TAGES device drivers are installed, the program will function as an uninstaller, otherwise, it will function as an installer. Both x86-32 and x86-64 versions of the program are available.

Stability of the device drivers

With respect to stability, there is not much evidence of any significant trouble arising from the deployment of the TAGES device drivers on a given PC. However, there is one known case where an update was produced by TAGES SA, to address conflicts with some unorthodox software products, as reported by some players of the English version of Darkstar One, a PC game. [2]

See also

• SafeDisc
• SecuROM
• StarForce
• LaserLock
• CD-Cops

External links and references

• The official web site of the TAGES SA Company.
• The THALES Group.
• MPO.