Black copies, cracked versions, blah blah

Everything else that doesn't fall into one of the other PB categories.
localmotion34
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Black copies, cracked versions, blah blah

Post by localmotion34 »

ok ive read numerous posts about black copies and cracked versions of PB on the net. ive even posted about creating a registration scheme. the general impression is that any software can be cracked at all. i once was looking for commercial protection for my app, and ran across a company who advertised "We are proud to say EVERY copy of our software that is running in the full version mode has been paid for". well, it took me a while, but i did find that a certain group had indeed cracked it, but did not release any cracks to updates. apparantly, the crack had been "stolen" by another group and posted as their own. hence you will find an old member of that cracking group now on "his own". Anyway, there are cracks out there for mostly ANY program. Windows XP, autocad 2004, delphi 7, ect. the high profile ones are always cracked, and the ones who advertise their protection is better are cracked even faster. come on lets face it, orion, TSRH, all those guys are MASTERS of programming. they know ASM, C, C# inside out. to think fred can write a key to stop them is impossible. however, what would masters of programming like them need with PB? they could simply write any program they wanted with any language more complex than PB. its the FUN of cracking that drives them. the registration is to stop everyday users from simply not paying for PB. face it, most of you guys are really good at programming, and if you wanted, you could sit for hours or days and figure out how to crack PB. most of us, it would take a while. its simply not worth it to us. whats fun about cracking PB and then developing software we might sell as our own? i bought 3D studio max, and it uses C DILLA. every time i run spybot or adaware, i have to uninstall and reinstall 3DSM cause they delete CDILLA. that licensing is ridiculous. over 3 days i used 3DSM, CDILLA transmitted 50 megs of data over my campus server, which IT thought was file sharing use from me. so you know what, i cracked that thing to stop it, and to hell with CDILLA. forget it if you think imma let that transnit info about me over the net. and what about users who have DIAL UP, or no internet access at all. you cant use a reg like that for them. the bottom line is, PB 4.0, 5.0 ,90.0 will be cracked. probably simply for the sheer fun of it. the rest of us however, have paid or will pay, we love fred, we love PB, and we got his back. :D keep the registration tough, but fair, simple yet workable. dont make it tough to reinstall PB when we have a crash (thanks microcrap). forget about orion and TRSH. they will crack circles around us. focues on the people who would have a lax conscience about paying for PB: most of them cant crack a lick, or arent very good. we arernt gonna crack PB, we are waiting for that DATABASE GADGET and FLEXGRID fred!!!!!!! HINT HINT HINT. everday users cracking PB just might stop the whole thing. there, thats my 4 cents.

Code: Select all

!.WHILE status != dwPassedOut
! Invoke AllocateDrink, dwBeerAmount
!MOV Mug, Beer
!Invoke Drink, Mug, dwBeerAmount
!.endw
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Post by thefool »

"We love fred, we love PB"

yes, indeed :)

Good article.
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Post by Karbon »

I don't think this is as big an issue as it appears to be.. Currently there isn't any registration at all for PB so there is no real need for a crack - just for a single user to spread the full version around. Most of the people that use cracked or stolen versions of software would never purchase it in the first place - so nothing is truly lost.

I should hope that programmers using PB to develop products would have enough respect for the hard work and time put into it's development to drop $60ish and say thanks. I realize there are some shady people that won't, but there is nothing any of us can do to give ethics to the un-ethical..

Onward!

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Post by Shannara »

I know some people who have an online license server that their product connects and validates the license everytime it is ran to make sure it is a legit copy. It uses hardware serials to determine that as well. However, anybody can crack the program so it does not send such data. The problem there is that all datafiles are branded with the hardware serials as well. So if anything was transferred (like maps, etc) to another person or if the company got ahold of the file, they know it has been cracked.. oops!

Hmm, oh well, ur right though, there are tons of criminals out there.
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Post by storck »

come on lets face it, orion, TSRH, all those guys are MASTERS of programming. they know ASM, C, C# inside out.
How do you know localmotion34? Friends of yours? You a member? :wink: You seem very impressed with these MASTERS.
what would masters of programming like them need with PB? they could simply write any program they wanted with any language more complex than PB.
There is no need for a good cracker to know any more complex language than ASM. That is the output of both debuggers and disassemblers, the two main tools used. Well, yes you often need a hex editor as well, but that has nothing to do with programming languages. Then again, if you can do it in ASM, you will probably not have any problem doing it in a more complex language.
focus on the people who would have a lax conscience about paying for PB: most of them cant crack a lick, or arent very good
Do I read between the lines yet some more admiration for the cracking crews and people skilled in the art of reverse engineering? The problem localmotion34 is that the very crews you seem so impressed with, the MASTERS, release their cracks to the public and any stupid kid can download and apply a patch. They don't have to know anything about cracking. If they want to get rid of cdilla they download a patch. That's all there is to it.

Most protections can only prevent people like my grandmother from giving copies to her friends. The rest can at least download a patch.

Why not just make a nice compiler and ide for people who are willing to pay for it. And maybe some protection to lock my grandmother out. :)

Regards,

Storck
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Post by TronDoc »

It would impress me more if these "masters" could actually
write a substantial program for the benefit of mankind.
(or at least some philanthropic programming group) :lol: --jb
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Post by storck »

When I review my post it seems rather harsh. Sorry :( localmotion34 I just have a thing :evil: with this MASTER attitude. It is so much more easy to crack a program than to actually write one.

Just think about it. How many hours would it take you to program 3d studio max? It would take one person years. How long would it take one person to crack it? A very short time in comparison.

MASTERs like TSRH or Orion would not write 3d studio max in a couple of days, weeks or even months, using their complex languages. If they could they would.

On a good day you can crack at least a few programs with an average protection. How many programs of commercial quality could you write in one day?

C ya!

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Post by Inner »

There not "MASTERS" at all, I was once apart of a cracking group known as Digital Corruption on the Amiga many years ago, and with all due respect to them, they really only know enough about ASM,C,C#,Etc. as they need to crack a bit of software, or to write a bit of software to either genorate and algorythm for key gen/patch past that they don't know that much at all really, that is why DC (mentioned above) resorted to my skills since I was an application programmer, and they needed one to do work on AmigaICQ, there atempts to obtain the protocal legally failed, so they spoofed the protocal and well the rest is history, the group pretty much disbanned after that since the fall of Amiga.

Some probably a rare few can 'really' code, but mostly they know enough to get by software protection because that is there field of expertise.

One of the dumbest things I've seen is releasing full working copys of software that are only protected by a serial number, this is just plain stuppid, release the software as demo crippeled by code, and only ordered copys come out full, if you get my meaning.
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Post by Karbon »

Inner wrote:One of the dumbest things I've seen is releasing full working copys of software that are only protected by a serial number, this is just plain stuppid, release the software as demo crippeled by code, and only ordered copys come out full, if you get my meaning.
Dumb as it may sound it's a practical solution to a real problem. For example, if someone registers my program to do billing they don't want to lose any information they already have saved and I want to be able to show them all the features (for a limited time). If I were to distro this software with many of the features removed then I'm only advertising part of what the software can do on the whole and complicating my life exponentially by maintaining two seperate versions of the software.. Software piracy isn't something we are ever going to stop - we just have to hope that there are enough people that are willing to pay!
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Post by Cor »

TronDoc,

Looking at the picture it seems you are going back to your roots 8O
TronDoc wrote:It would impress me more if these "masters" could actually
write a substantial program for the benefit of mankind.
(or at least some philanthropic programming group) :lol: --jb
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Re: Black copies, cracked versions, blah blah

Post by Guimauve »

localmotion34 wrote:and the ones who advertise their protection is better are cracked even faster.
Yes it's true, but some programs need to have a physical key plugged on the computer to work. ( SurfCam, Catia V5, ... )

This method are just the best solution to date to protect a software. It's very difficult to emulate a physical key but not impossible. But sometime you just need to change some small BIN or HEX value into the EXE or DLL to bypass the key protection.

Software protection are the main reason why I would like to create my program.

PureBasic are just the tool of the tool, extremelly powerful and available at low cost. And more important all update are free.

Thanks Fred for PureBasic.
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Post by localmotion34 »

hey its all good about your replies. i just give respect to people who have knowledge that i do not. i am a big fan of NOCD cracks, provided you really do own the game. i got halo combat evolved for xmas, and as soon as i put the NOCD EXE file in the dir, it ran about twice as fast. CD checks always slow my machine down. ive read some NFO files from Myth, a group who releases gamez or NOCD cracks. they put the requirements to join that group in the NFO file, and it looks like youve gotta have a ton of programming knowledge to join. not that i want to join at all, but the people who do seem to have extensive programming knowledge. remember, these people have the kind of knowledge that i will have to work against in counter terrorism when i get done my PHD. so i always give proper respect to people who know something i dont. i try not to underestimate anyone. at some point, ill probably have to decrypt some whacko's computer files on how he wanted to nuke the world, and ill have to be more savvy than him. my main message was that no matter what Fred does, PB will always have some warez, and please dont make going through the updates take an act of U.S. congress. cause i know 4.0 is gonna hev the gridgadget and flexgrid :D 8O, and ill want to get at those right away :P

Code: Select all

!.WHILE status != dwPassedOut
! Invoke AllocateDrink, dwBeerAmount
!MOV Mug, Beer
!Invoke Drink, Mug, dwBeerAmount
!.endw
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Post by geoff »

How about this (naive) idea?

1) Require a username and password for download of PB updates.
2) Include a hidden identifier in each download
(in several non obvious places)
3) Disable a password if the associated identifier is found in a crack.

Now tell me why this won't work (politely please)
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Post by dontmailme »

I had the same ( Almost ) thought....

Each copy of your program has a unique key which userso only get in the full 'paid for' version and in the case of purebasic the generated 'exe' would also have this key....

Therefore if a cracked version appeared, you would know who leaked it and could ban them...

Or if a program appeared with the hideen key you'd see who was using a cracked version.....

:)
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Post by Kanati »

And it would take a 12 year old with a hex editor approximately 5 minutes to change that id... Anything you can think of can be hacked.

Kanati
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