Sentinel Envelope

2019: Transition to the Thales Sentinel brand

The Sentinel Envelope solution was originally developed by SafeNet, acquired in 2015 by Gemalto, which, in turn, was bought and absorbed by Thales in 2019. As a result of these transactions, products for monetizing software SafeNet began to be sold under the Thales Sentinel brand.

2013: Third Generation Sentinel Envelope Availability

In April 2013, SafeNet announced the availability of the third generation Sentinel Envelope technology, which helps software developers protect the integrity of their code, ensures high application security, and at the same time reduces application implementation delays, and reduces administrative and management costs.

Software publishers try to find a balance in order to prevent the illegal use of the software and not create additional difficulties for legitimate, full-fledged users of their products. Taking into account the needs of the publishers, Sentinel Envelope integrates into the Sentinel LDK environment, a ready-made infrastructure system for software protection, licensing and software rights management, thus helping publishers protect their software and intellectual property, minimizing possible failures and maximizing profitability.

Sentinel Envelope technology allows you to achieve all this by providing developers with advanced tools to protect applications, including an automatic file wrapper, which uses advanced SafeNet file encryption algorithms, code obfuscation technologies and technologies that prevent the possibility of exploring, debugging and editing code. In addition, Sentinel Envelope technology creates a reliable screen that secures executable files and dynamically connected libraries (.dll files), and binds applications to hardware or software-dependent protection keys, thereby allowing customers to more effectively implement copy protection, preserve trade secrets, professional know-how and intellectual property from reverse engineering, hacking and computer piracy.

"To stay competitive and meet today's market requirements, it's important for independent software developers to be able to protect years of production secrets and other intellectual property," said Jake Fox, Vice President of Product Management at Software Monetization, SafeNet. - The third generation of LDK Envelope technology takes software protection to a new level. The LDK Envelope solution makes it extremely difficult for hackers to analyze and reverse engineer protected intellectual property. By providing a high level of security for their applications, software vendors maintain their competitive advantage. "

Sentinel Envelope technology offers a number of new progressive features for both 32-bit and 64-bit systems, including: support for import table switching, original entry point (OEP) obfuscation, continuous protection against debugging of the program at the stage of its execution, improved mechanisms for protecting against debugging and code analysis that work in real time, as well as the first and only file packaging solution in the industry that uses a secure channel on the principle of a transparent box. This approach prevents dynamic or static extraction of the encryption key from protected binaries. Functions implemented in Sentinel Envelope technologies provide software developers with improved protection against copying, modification and hacking of programs.

Third generation Sentinel Envelope technology enhancements include:

• Improved security for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures - Prevent the ability to recreate protected binaries with memory-dumping attacks.
• A secure communication channel built on the principle of a transparent box - the use of manufacturer-specific components that ensure that the encryption key is not dynamically or statically extracted from the protected binary files to the communication channel. This is the first such solution in the industry.
• Import address table obfuscation and gating (gating) - Eliminate the import address table (IAT) and disperse the information contained in it by the Enelope code, including masking the original entry point (OEP). Calls to imported system functions are also redirected through import gates for all known system dll files.
• Continuous program protection from debugging at the stage of its execution - improves the mechanism for detecting the user to enable debugging of running processes, which complicates the use of trace methods and introduces some confusion due to late responses, misleading commands and the output of false information.
• User-mode software licensing - allows you to license the software based on the nature of its use and does not require the installation of a runtime environment, which makes application deployment easier and faster, reduces the load on support services and does not require administrator rights.

Thanks to all these enhancements, Sentinel LDK Envelope is one of the most powerful security applications on the market today. The new features will allow software developers to more effectively protect their assets and control the use of their applications, guarantee the integrity of products and brands, help more effectively combat industrial espionage and protect the sources of their income.