title: License key pattern detection?
body: <p><strong>This is not a real situation; please ignore legal issues that you might think apply, because they don't.</strong></p>
  
  <p>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: <code>HXDY6-R3DD7-Y8FRT-UNPVT-JSKON</code></p>
  
  <p>Is it possible (or likely) to extrapolate other possible keys for the system?</p>
  
  <p>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?</p>
  
  <p>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.</p>
  
  <p>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.</p>