Summary

This article discusses FlexNet Publisher and Wibu Dongle Drivers support and backward compatibility.

Question

As per FlexNet Publisher and Wibu Dongle Drivers Incompatibility, is there any other workaround?

Background

FlexNet Publisher 2016 R1 (11.14.0.0) and earlier will not recognize a FlexNet ID 10 dongle with the latest Wibu dongle driver installed (version 6.32) or the latest (version 6.51).

With the acquisition of Verisign by Symantec, the latest version of the Wibu dongle driver is now signed using Symantec digital certificate. Wibu was unable to revert to the older version of the digital certificate as it was expiring and they could not get a Digital Certificate from Symantec that used the Verisign name.

FlexNet Publisher verifies the dongle libraries against the digital certificate signer and issuer name to provide security and avoid spoofing of the dongle libraries (DLL)

Since the signer name has changed from Verisign to Symantec, the security check that validates the dongle libraries' signatures will fail; consequently, all current versions of FlexNet Publisher used with WIBU FlexNet ID 10 dongles will FAIL when end customers upgrade to the latest version of the driver.

If the latest (version 6.51) is installed from the FlexNet Publisher 11.18.2 kit, then the backward compatibility will be supported from 11.14.0 onwards since the backward compatibility issue is fixed to include both the issuer names in 11.14.0.

With the latest Wibukey, the dongle will not be fetched from the FlexNet Publisher 11.13.0.0 kit and throws the following error.

C:\11.13.0\x64_n6-11.13.0.0_v6\x64_n6>lmhostid.exe -flexid -long
lmhostid - Copyright (c) 1989-2014 Flexera Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is ""
WIBU DLL Signature not matched!
ALADDIN DLL Signature not matched!

Answer

If we replace Wibukey (DLL) from 11.13.0.0, the dongle will fetch the FLEXID from both versions.

The DLLs that we work with, wkwin32.dll and wkwin64.dll, are placed in the SysWOW64 and System32 folder. We have to replace these DLLs with the 11.13.0 driver DLLs.

1. Install the 11.13.0 driver and take backup of C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WkWin32.dll and C:\Windows\System32\WkWin64.dll.
   
   
2. Install the latest 11.18.2 kit v6.51 driver. Replace the latest files at this location (C:\Windows\SysWOW64\WkWin32.dll and C:\Windows\System32\WkWin64.dll) with 11.13.0 files.
   
   
3. Run the lmhostid with the latest and old kit, this will fetch the FLEXID.
   
   C:\Users\old\i86_n3-11.13.0.0_v6\i86_n3>lmhostid.exe -flexid
lmhostid - Copyright (c) 1989-2014 Flexera Software LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is "ALADDIN DLL not found!
FLEXID=10-0bebfb37"

C:\Users\latest\i86_n3-11.18.3.0_v6\i86_n3>lmhostid.exe -flexid -long
lmhostid - Copyright (c) 1989-2021 Flexera. All Rights Reserved.
The FlexNet host ID of this machine is "FLEXID=10-0bebfb37"
ALADDIN DLL not found!