Are crackers skilled programmers?

metalmackey

metalmackey

metalmackey

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Hi Folks,

I think I can post this as i'm not saying iys legal or linking to dadgy sites:)

Are the people who make cracks for games and other apps great programmers? Or, is it that copy protection on most games is poo? If its the latter, why bother to have it if its cracked in a week or so?

Thanks
 
Some copy protection does take a lot of skill to crack...others don't. Mostly, old protections and such can be easily cracked by just changing one binary/hex value in the exe.
 
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It's skill to begin with, then experience. Only when a genuinely new method of protection comes out does it require much skill to break.
 
In the old days it was just a matter of renaming a link within the exe file that asked for cd protection, or re-direct it to a bogus file that contained enough information about the cd to pass the protection. Now-a-days its a different kettle of fish though.
 
Innovation isn't just confined to the development studios ya'know. It's a bit like cops and robbers, cops will always catch some robbers but there are always the clever ones who stay one step ahead of the game.
 
aes doesnt take thousands of years to crack if you know the key ;) - the trick is finding it

and if its disk protection, the key has to be on the disk

a lot of applications decrypt once in the ram too, which helps,
 
I'd hasard a guess that organised criminals have the cash to buy employees of security companies who make the encryption software.

When you consider the legal market for GTAIV is 500 million USD it wouldn't surprise me if the black market value is twice that. Can you imagine the revenue created by criminal gangs should they be able to crack the PS3 encryption.
 
Only in soviet russia is black market bigger then the real market :D The main thing is they have few costs once its copyable

Some crackers are as skilled as the programmers themselves, most guys are just low grade traders.
 
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.
 
a lot of crackers i think use demo exes which doesnt hold protection but has the majority of the final code in just bits disabled. What they do is check the retail vs the demo and find the copy protection and remove it or bypass it.
 
metalmackey said:
Can't the .exe be encrypted so its near impossible to decompile?
Click to expand...

No decompilation takes place. Most crackers edit the already compiled exe by hand using a hex editor or something similar.

Even if the exe is encrypted it can be decrypted fairly easily just by watching what the program is doing - ie. where is it getting its decryption key from? It has to be stored in memory somewhere

I don't think crackers necessarily have to be skilled programmers. All they need is an understanding of how a computer works and how the different parts of assembly programming fit together. You don't need to be a coding genius to suss that out, although it helps.
 
it depends on what software you want to crack. but with the majority of it going about it doesnt seem to be that big a problem.
 
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