Generate machine-specific key for Mac

Question

On Windows, we generate a PC-specific unique key used to tie a license to a PC. It's a C++ app using wxWidgets, which is theoretically cross-platform compatible but not been maintained on the Mac side. We use some Win32-specific code for generating a key... how might I do something comparable on the Mac?

Answer 1

To uniquely identify any machine you could try to use the MAC address. The process, although not trivial, its quite simple. There are a lot of cross platform open source libraries.

In fact you could try this Apple dev example

Answer 2

You could just call system_profiler and look for "Serial Number"

/usr/sbin/system_profiler | grep "Serial Number (system)"

There might well be a programmatic way to get the same information, but I don't know it offhand.

Answer 3

Looking more into whitelionV and blahdiblah's asnwers, I found this useful page:

Accessing the system serial number programmatically

#include <CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.h>
#include <IOKit/IOKitLib.h>

// Returns the serial number as a CFString. 
// It is the caller's responsibility to release the returned CFString when done with it.
void CopySerialNumber(CFStringRef *serialNumber)
{
    if (serialNumber != NULL) {
        *serialNumber = NULL;

        io_service_t    platformExpert = IOServiceGetMatchingService(kIOMasterPortDefault,
                                                                         IOServiceMatching("IOPlatformExpertDevice"));

        if (platformExpert) {
            CFTypeRef serialNumberAsCFString = 
                IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperty(platformExpert,
                                                CFSTR(kIOPlatformSerialNumberKey),
                                                kCFAllocatorDefault, 0);
            if (serialNumberAsCFString) {
                *serialNumber = serialNumberAsCFString;
            }

            IOObjectRelease(platformExpert);
        }
    }
}

Accessing the built-in MAC address programmatically

#include <stdio.h>
#include <CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.h>
#include <IOKit/IOKitLib.h>
#include <IOKit/network/IOEthernetInterface.h>
#include <IOKit/network/IONetworkInterface.h>
#include <IOKit/network/IOEthernetController.h>

static kern_return_t FindEthernetInterfaces(io_iterator_t *matchingServices);
static kern_return_t GetMACAddress(io_iterator_t intfIterator, UInt8 *MACAddress, UInt8 bufferSize);

static kern_return_t FindEthernetInterfaces(io_iterator_t *matchingServices)
{
    kern_return_t           kernResult; 
    CFMutableDictionaryRef  matchingDict;
    CFMutableDictionaryRef  propertyMatchDict;

    matchingDict = IOServiceMatching(kIOEthernetInterfaceClass);

    if (NULL == matchingDict) {
        printf("IOServiceMatching returned a NULL dictionary.\n");
    }
    else {
        propertyMatchDict = CFDictionaryCreateMutable(kCFAllocatorDefault, 0,
                                                      &kCFTypeDictionaryKeyCallBacks,
                                                      &kCFTypeDictionaryValueCallBacks);

        if (NULL == propertyMatchDict) {
            printf("CFDictionaryCreateMutable returned a NULL dictionary.\n");
        }
        else {
            CFDictionarySetValue(matchingDict, CFSTR(kIOPropertyMatchKey), propertyMatchDict);
            CFRelease(propertyMatchDict);
        }
    }

    kernResult = IOServiceGetMatchingServices(kIOMasterPortDefault, matchingDict, matchingServices);    
    if (KERN_SUCCESS != kernResult) {
        printf("IOServiceGetMatchingServices returned 0x%08x\n", kernResult);
    }

    return kernResult;
}

static kern_return_t GetMACAddress(io_iterator_t intfIterator, UInt8 *MACAddress, UInt8 bufferSize)
{
    io_object_t     intfService;
    io_object_t     controllerService;
    kern_return_t   kernResult = KERN_FAILURE;

    if (bufferSize < kIOEthernetAddressSize) {
        return kernResult;
    }

    bzero(MACAddress, bufferSize);

    while ((intfService = IOIteratorNext(intfIterator)))
    {
        CFTypeRef   MACAddressAsCFData;        
        kernResult = IORegistryEntryGetParentEntry(intfService,
                                                   kIOServicePlane,
                                                   &controllerService);

        if (KERN_SUCCESS != kernResult) {
            printf("IORegistryEntryGetParentEntry returned 0x%08x\n", kernResult);
        }
        else {
            MACAddressAsCFData = IORegistryEntryCreateCFProperty(controllerService,
                                                                 CFSTR(kIOMACAddress),
                                                                 kCFAllocatorDefault,
                                                                 0);
            if (MACAddressAsCFData) {
                CFShow(MACAddressAsCFData); // for display purposes only; output goes to stderr

                CFDataGetBytes(MACAddressAsCFData, CFRangeMake(0, kIOEthernetAddressSize), MACAddress);
                CFRelease(MACAddressAsCFData);
            }

            (void) IOObjectRelease(controllerService);
        }

        (void) IOObjectRelease(intfService);
    }

    return kernResult;
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
    kern_return_t   kernResult = KERN_SUCCESS;
    io_iterator_t   intfIterator;
    UInt8           MACAddress[kIOEthernetAddressSize];

    kernResult = FindEthernetInterfaces(&intfIterator);

    if (KERN_SUCCESS != kernResult) {
        printf("FindEthernetInterfaces returned 0x%08x\n", kernResult);
    }
    else {
        kernResult = GetMACAddress(intfIterator, MACAddress, sizeof(MACAddress));

        if (KERN_SUCCESS != kernResult) {
            printf("GetMACAddress returned 0x%08x\n", kernResult);
        }
        else {
            printf("This system's built-in MAC address is %02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x:%02x.\n",
                    MACAddress[0], MACAddress[1], MACAddress[2], MACAddress[3], MACAddress[4], MACAddress[5]);
        }
    }

    (void) IOObjectRelease(intfIterator);   // Release the iterator.

    return kernResult;
}

While MAC is on the face of it probably preferable as being more predictable, they warn that:

Netbooting introduces a wrinkle with systems with multiple built-in Ethernet ports. The primary Ethernet port on these systems is the one that is connected to the NetBoot server. This means that a search for the primary port may return either of the built-in MAC addresses depending on which port was used for netbooting. Note that "built-in" does not include Ethernet ports that reside on an expansion card.

It concerns me this might mean you don't always get the same value back?