Finding all Applications serial Numbers using Casper Inventory

That would truly be wonderful if it were possible, but it's simply not.
On 3/3/11 5:29 AM, "vinay washimkar" <vinaywashimkar at hotmail.com> wrote:
Not every developer stores his application's serial number in the same way.

Some create a one-way hash preventing you from deciphering the original
serial number (Microsoft). Some store the serial number in proprietary
database file format or a blob in a file (Adobe). Some (I'm looking at
you, Quark!) choose to continue storing it in a resource file.

Also, not all developers store their serial numbers in the same place.
Some are within the application itself (Quark again), some in a
preferences file in /Library/Preferences (Default Folder X, if you've it
to be available to all users), some in the /Users/Shared folder (Extensis)
and others in ~/Library/Preferences (Fontographer) for each user (what's
up with that!?).

And with activation these days, developers don't even need to store
anything more than a key generating by their website that's specific to
your machine. No serial number gets stored.

I hate to say it but one of the more interesting parts of my job is trying
to reverse-engineer various application installations and learn their
techniques for the sake of deployment. Some serial numbers are actually
stored in plain text (e.g. Parallels) and easy to read using the defaults
or plistbuddy commands. Folks could share Casper extension attributes for
these.

Not sure why you're wanting to pull application serial numbers from the
machines but, IMHO, the best way to manage serial numbers is to assign
them to machines using your own database before the software's even
deployed to it.

--

William Smith
Technical Analyst
Merrill Communications LLC
(651) 632-1492