I need a solution where we distribute content including ebooks and rich media files on USBs to users. The content and media needs to be protected and users should not be able to share or download the files. All of this should be in a offline environment. No connectivity required.
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2Did you try anything? Most likely it's impossible at least with your vague description. – Seth Apr 26 '18 at 09:58
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Protected against what? Users should be unable to share files with who? Download from where, to where? – gronostaj Apr 26 '18 at 10:01
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Users should not be able to download the files to their laptops, or if they do, they should not be able to email/save/share/upload the content files to redistibute to anyone else. – Amanda Apr 26 '18 at 10:06
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@Amanda clarification to your question should be done by editing it not submitting commentary – Ramhound Apr 26 '18 at 11:32
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Luckily this is not possible in an offline environment. There are some techniques to make it harder, but not on a standard USB key without Internet connectivity. – davidgo Apr 26 '18 at 11:44
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Possible duplicate of How to protect copying files out of flash memory? – u1686_grawity Apr 26 '18 at 15:15
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This is not trivially possible.
If they need to be able to use the files then they need to be able to read it. If they are able to read it then they can copy them.
Since they need to be able to read the data the only option to have is to use encrypted data and provide a temporarily decoding option. That your own program to read the ebooks and media files. That way they need your program and you can have it check the date to see when i needs to stop working.
In order to prevent users from setting back your clock you could even go one step further and require connectivity to one of your servers, and only provide the decode key at moment you want your customers to read your data.
Hennes
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2Unless you also encrypt that communication it would be less then trivial but still possible, to fake your server. DRM is difficult to design, harder to implement effectively, and trivial to break – Ramhound Apr 26 '18 at 11:34
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2Yup. Just see to which effort the movie industry went. If access (use) but not access (read) was trivial then they surely would have solved that. – Hennes Apr 26 '18 at 13:59