WIBU CmActLicense license explained (software container)

Modified on Thu, 16 Oct, 2025 at 10:33 AM

Our software is protected by the external tool 'WIBU Systems' in order to protect and license our software tools.

There are 2 types of containers that we support:

Hardware container > CmStick/B
Software container > CmActLicense

When activating the license ticket into a software container (CmActLicense), WIBU CodeMeter creates a fingerprint of the computer, which records several hardware properties, such as the hard disk, motherboard, network card, and CPU.
The fingerprint automatically takes the environment and the operating system of the user into account.
Virtual environments and their specific characteristics are automatically detected as well and will be taken into account when determining the fingerprint.

The tolerance mechanism ensures that the CmActLicense and the cryptographic keys stored in the license file remain valid, even when the hardware of the computer is replaced within the tolerance level. In a virtual environment, the hardware changes are less tolerant.

Minor adjustments to the system will therefore not cause any problems for the licenses, but if too many differences are detected, the license will become unusable.

When the tolerance level is breached, is also unclear to us and we have limited to no control over this process.

For this reason, we recommend choosing the hardware license container (CMStick/B) whenever possible.
These licenses can then be shared with the virtual machine using USB passthrough, USB servers or USB-to-Ethernet sharing software.
Please note that Hyper-V does not support USB passthrough!

For reference:

CMStick/B