Moxa RM-1602-T [25/52] Software lock

ioPAC RTU Software RTU Management

3-11

Software Lock

Software Lock is an innovative technology developed by the Moxa engineering team. It can be adopted by a

system integrator or developer to protect his/her applications from being copied. An application is compiled

into a binary format bound to the ioPAC RTU and the operating system (OS) that the application runs on. So as

long as the application is obtained from the development PC, it can be installed on the same hardware and the

same operating system, resulting in a loss of the add-on value created by the developer.

Moxa’s engineers used data encryption to develop this protection mechanism for your applications. The binary

file associated with each of your applications needs to undergo an additional encryption process after you have

developed it. The process requires you to install an encryption key on the ioPAC RTU.

1. Choose an encryption key (e.g.,”ABigKey”) and install it on the ioPAC RTU controller using the pre-loaded

setkey utility program.

#setkey ABigKey

NOTE: set an empty string to clear the encryption key on the ioPAC RTU controller by:

#setkey ““

2. Develop and compile your program in the development PC.

3. On the development PC, run the binencryptor utility program to encrypt your program with an encryption

key.

#binencryptor yourProgram ABigKey

4. Upload the encrypted program file to the ioPAC RTU by FTP or NFS and test the program.

The encryption key is a computer-wise key. That is to say, an ioPAC RTU has only one key installed. Running

the setkey program multiple times overrides the existing key.

To prove the effectiveness of this software protection mechanism, prepare an ioPAC RTU that has not been

installed an encryption key or install a key different from that used to encrypt your program. In any case, the

encrypted program fails immediately.

This mechanism also allows an ioPAC RTU with an encryption key to bypass programs that are not encrypted,

and is useful in developing and testing programs on the ioPAC RTU.