How can I make a program that runs only when I insert the USB drive?

Question

Let me explain what it's like. I want a program that's installed in a PC but you can't run it unless you insert a USB drive where some part of the program is stored. So the point is, the program is useless if you don't have both PC and USB drive. Since I want it to run in Windows, what kind of language shall I use apart of .NET and C#?

Can I done with Python?

Answer 1

If you're trying to do this for copy protection or license management, there are commercial solutions for this that are very difficult (but still not impossible) to beat. For you to develop something that's robust will end up costing you more than it would cost to license a solution from Pace or Aladdin or any of their competitors.

Answer 2

Commercial solutions often have (usb) devices with a microchip that can do public-key cryptography. This rules out faking the device.

Example: program generates a challenge-code, encrypts it with public key -> device decrypts it with it's secret key (stored in microchip) and gives the challenge-code back for verification.

An attacker can only attack the communication between program and device or directly the program. This is were code obfuscation, on-demand code decryption, ... comes into play. Very complicated :) and no system is 100% safe.