I’m trying to build a number generator that creates 16 character serials by using input from a NSTextField. So I can create SN for my app, For Example

*Name:Bob Smith *SN: XXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXX

Any Help.

Are the X’s digits and/or letters? Are they derived from the name (e.g., hashing)? Using some random number generation routine might be useful.

seriously, if you need help with this stuff, you probably should not make your application shareware! :-)

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A simple way to do this would be to generate a hash of the customer name, combine this with a secret number, then generate a hash of the resulting data. This new hash (which includes your secret number) is then used as the SN/key for the app. Inside the app you can regenerate the SN/key by performing the hashing process again and checking to see if the hash you compute matches the hash that the user has entered.

Of course, your secret number must be embedded within the application in order to verify the SN/key in this way. You could make the process more secure by making your app establish a network connection to your server (which has the secret number instead of the application) and ask it to verify the SN/key.

There are many different ways to do this sort of thing. If you are looking for a more secure method, you might explore using RSA/PublicKey encryption techniques.

Fundamentally, any code that runs on a client computer is totally untrustworthy as far as security is concerened, because there is nothing stopping the user from re-writing the code or using a debugger to examine the internal processes for weaknesses.