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 Tagès was a PC game, MotoRacer 3, developed by Delphine Software (DSI) and released in 2001. This marked the first sale and licensing of the Tagès copy protection system.
In 2003, an independent company, Tagès 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 Tagès copy protection system.
The Tagès copy protection system is compatible with multiple versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and is employed on CD and DVD discs.
The makers Tagès of claim that one of the main strengths of their product is the incorporation of a "Secure Area" on a physical medium, which renders the production of a relatively perfect copy of a protected disc a nearly impossible task. Additionally, a set of anti-cracking instruments is being provided with the protection system (such as TAGESCAP, Tagès APIs and Tagès VFS); this is claimed to make the reverse-engineering of Tagès-protected applications a difficult and time-consuming task.
Protection strategies
As previously mentioned in this article, Tagès employs several techniques in order to counter software piracy. These techniques span over three main areas of interest:
Reverse-engineering countermeasures
Tagès offers various strategies designated to resist the reverse-engineering and cracking of Tagès-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 procedure only to one single check, which will essentially be carried out at the start-up of the protected application.
Tagès APIs - A set of instruments allowing the developer to work seamlessly with the Secure Area which Tagès provides; not only does it enable the storage of sensitive information (such as cryptographic 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 Tagès APIs feature, however, requires modifications and additions to the source code of the to-be protected application.
Tagès 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.
Tagès permits the combination of the aforementioned strategies for a given project, in order to further increase the strength and security of the protection being applied.
As of mid-2007 and up until the time of this writing (November, 2007), a popular practice has been to combine the Tagès protection system with the SolidShield protection system, as evident from a plethora of recent Tagès-protected applications. Namely, SolidShield joined by the Tagès APIs is a very common configuration, as usually one can not apply two executable wrappers (That is to say, both SolidShield and TAGESCAP) on the same executable file.
Device drivers and stability
As with most optical disc-based copy protection systems (such as SafeDisc, StarForce, etc.), Tagès installs its own device drivers as a part of the copy protection system. The Tagès device drivers are installed on the first launch of any Tagès-protected application.
Uninstallation of the Tagès device drivers
Tagès SA provides an official, standalone, device driver installation and uninstallation program [1]. This program functions as a toggle; once the Tagès device drivers are installed, the program will function as an uninstaller, otherwise, it will function as an installer. Both 32bit and 64bit versions of the program are available.
Stability of the Tagès device drivers
With respect to stability, there is not much evidence of any significant trouble arising from the deployment of the Tagès device drivers on a given PC. However, there is one known case in which an update was produced by Tagès SA, to address conflicts with some unorthodox software products, as reported by some players of a Tagès-protected PC game, Darkstar One, in its English version.
Known problems
Some users of Ubisoft's The Settlers: Rise of an Empire, which uses Tagès, reported that the game gives them a message instructing them to insert the DVD into the drive, when the DVD is already in the drive. Various proposed remedies only worked for some users. A moderator on Ubisoft's forum posted a workaround for the problem, which removes the disc check by deferring to online product activation instead.
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