Tagès
 | The neutrality of this article is disputed. |
| Developer(s) | TAGES SA |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 5.5.2.1
/ 2006 |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Digital Rights Management |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://www.tagesprotection.com |
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 currently 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 and licensing of the TAGES copy 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 system 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 incorporation of a "Secure Area" on a physical medium, which renders the production of a relatively perfect copy of a TAGES protected disc, utilizing modern hardware, a nearly impossible task. Additionally, a set of anti-cracking instruments is being provided with the protection system (such as TAGESCAP, TAGES APIs and TAGES VFS). 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 counter 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"):
Defense against the circumvention of the protection by means of reverse-engineering
TAGES offers various strategies to resist the reverse-engineering and cracking of TAGES-protected software, among which are:
- 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 which 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 work seamlessly with the Secure Area which TAGES provides; not only does it enable the storage of sensitive information (such as encryption and decryption keys, certificates, etc.) within the Secure Area, but it also enables the developer to implement a set of fully customized "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 that 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 in which, 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 premeditated anomalies. Notably, a developer could specify that an explicitly restricted version of the protected application (such as a demo version) would 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 VFS - An encrypted virtual file system, allowing the developer to additionally encrypt selected non-executable content which is of an association to the to-be protected software. When a successfully authenticated protected application runs, it has transparent access to the original (decrypted, plain-text) content; this functionality is achieved by means of a device driver. Should a protected application's authentication phase be successfully removed by means of deliberate circumvention, the application's erroneous behaviour is to be expected, that is due to the fact that the encrypted content is not being accessible to the application in its preliminary plain-text form, and from the running application's perspective, it is being naturally considered as an unexpected garbage data - resulting, in most cases, in a protected application's crash.
TAGES permits the combination of the aforementioned strategies for a given project, in order to further increase the strength and security of the protection.
Defense against the 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 implementation of the TAGES APIs can be extended to cover this scenario as well.
There is, however, two commercial disc emulator software packages which, at the time of this writing (August, 2007), succeed in creating working disc images of TAGES-protected media, and then successfully play back the created disc images.
Defense against the RAW copying, "Cloning" of a protected carrier
TAGES SA claims that the nature of their product and the structuring of the Secure Area make it extremely difficult to produce a working copy of a protected disc.
In 2004, there was limited success in the duplication of TAGES-protected CDs, 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 with 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, etc.), 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.
Uninstallation of the TAGES device drivers
TAGES SA provides an official, standalone, device driver installation and uninstallation program [2]. 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 TAGES 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 in which an update was produced by TAGES SA, to address conflicts with some unorthodox software products, as reported by some players of a TAGES-protected PC game, Darkstar One, in its English version. [3]