Are crackers skilled programmers?

[Bhoya]

At uni I knew a few people who were big into their cracking, even got me to write a debugger tool. Good crackers by nature have to be good programmers and have the attention span and problem solving skills of a ridiculous level.

 

[Dj_Jestar]

I remember the news of the Razor1911 "leader" getting arrested for fraud/theft of over £300,000 worth of Cisco equipment. He was a con-man and posed as a journalist for various magazines, which is how he got the equipment and games to "review" and would then copy/crack/release the games, and just not give the equipment back and either use it or sell it.

Cracking is not "difficult" it's difficult to learn because it's a taboo subject, so not that much material for reading. Even hacking isn't difficult, you just need to have the right mindset, a butt load of patience and the know-how.

 

[wombraider]

I wrote a few cracks to remove the need for a cd in the drive a few years ago.

I used windasm to trace thru the code execution until it hit the code section
giving you the "please insert disc message" , I then traced the code backwards to find where it was looking for the disc.

At the end of the day it usually boils down to one simple IF statement , you just
have to have the patience to find it.

 

[Schnippzle]

I've always considered virus writers to be incredibly skilled. Not the type that take advantage of hole in the OS, but those who used to do the real nasty ones.

Backdoor and rootkit writers are considerably more skilled Especially if they have a hidden ftp client and/or auto aspnet account creating script with it.

 

[v0n]

I remember the news of the Razor1911 "leader" getting arrested for fraud/theft of over £300,000 worth of Cisco equipment. He was a con-man and posed as a journalist for various magazines, which is how he got the equipment and games to "review" and would then copy/crack/release the games, and just not give the equipment back and either use it or sell it.

He wasn't posing as journalist. Breen created gold plaque type company - Comptel Logistics in a storage space somewhere in Oakland and then used few hacked accounts posing as Cisco customers to order Fedex deliveries to that drop box. Arguably, if it wasn't for his rather careless $650,000 shopping spree at Cisco Razor1911 would never be tracked and raided by authorities.

 

[Cutshaw]

This is related.. I suppose. I always really liked the demos. I don't know how much skill goes into them, but I've loved them since the days of my old c64

 

[Tute]

Don't forget, certain people who are "close" to the games companies will get given the source code.

Now if that code was to find it's way onto a public domain - well it would be pretty simple to just remove the copy protection.

Although I don't understand virus makes at all. Why would you intentionally wreck someone else's computer? It's not like it makes them famous as a result. They just strike me as sad, lonely little people with a severe bitterness complex.

 

[Tefal]

Don't forget, certain people who are "close" to the games companies will get given the source code.

Now if that code was to find it's way onto a public domain - well it would be pretty simple to just remove the copy protection.

Although I don't understand virus makes at all. Why would you intentionally wreck someone else's computer? It's not like it makes them famous as a result. They just strike me as sad, lonely little people with a severe bitterness complex.

To make a bot net which = big monies.

Why vandalize stuff, why spray paint, why do a lot of things.