License key pattern detection?

Posted by Ricket on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ricket
Published on 2010-05-19T21:32:39Z Indexed on 2010/05/19 21:50 UTC
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This is not a real situation; please ignore legal issues that you might think apply, because they don't.

Let's say I have a set of 200 known valid license keys for a hypothetical piece of software's licensing algorithm, and a license key consists of 5 sets of 5 alphanumeric case-insensitive (all uppercase) characters. Example: HXDY6-R3DD7-Y8FRT-UNPVT-JSKON

Is it possible (or likely) to extrapolate other possible keys for the system?

What if the set was known to be consecutive; how do the methods change for this situation, and what kind of advantage does this give?

I have heard of "keygens" before, but I believe they are probably made by decompiling the licensing software rather than examining known valid keys. In this case, I am only given the set of keys and I must determine the algorithm. I'm also told it is an industry standard algorithm, so it's probably not something basic, though the chance is always there I suppose.

If you think this doesn't belong in Stack Overflow, please at least suggest an alternate place for me to look or ask the question. I honestly don't know where to begin with a problem like this. I don't even know the terminology for this kind of problem.

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