Java Applets Copy Protection by Steganography

Following the expansion of Internet, many software were produced that could launch through Internet without prior installation on computers. This included game software and software that deal with financial affairs. These softwares are mainly in Java language and can be found on web pages as Java Applets. Some software owners want that their products only able to execute through their own web pages so that no one could put them on other web pages. In this paper, a new method has been presented to protect Java Applets from copying by using "Steganography in HTML web pages" method. In this method, a special 8-character string is hidden in the HTML page by a secret key. The string and the secret key are put within the Java Applet. After execution, the Java Applet extracts data from the HTML page by using the secret key. If the extracted data is the same as the 8-letter string, we can be sure that the Java Applet lies in its original web page and no copying is taken place. This project is implemented by Java programming language.