The cat-and-mouse game between dongle vendors and emulation developers continues. With the rise of cloud-based licensing (e.g., FlexNet Publisher, 3DEXPERIENCE), some argue that local dongle emulation is becoming obsolete. However, many industrial control systems, medical devices, and broadcast equipment still rely on permanent, offline hardware keys.
The Multikey community has hinted at a possible “Multikey NG” (Next Generation) that would integrate with virtual TPM modules and support for Windows Core OS. Until then, Multikey 1822 updated represents the zenith of this generation of dongle emulation. multikey 1822 updated
DK = HKDF-SHA256(salt=keyID||version, info=context, IKM=KM, L=32)
Cause: Windows Driver Update overwrites the kernel driver.
Fix: Use Group Policy or wushowhide.diagcab to hide the Multikey driver from Windows Update. The cat-and-mouse game between dongle vendors and emulation