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Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

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Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#281

Post by atoav »

DarrenDev wrote: post #168
PreInternet01 wrote: post #29

Congratulations! Having cracked versions out there indicates that your software is both useful and notable, which is a point where many developers would love to arrive at, maybe, one day. As to what to do about it, there are two basic tracks, neither of which is incompatible with the other: 1. The legal route: notifying distribution sites that they're hosting content in violation of copyright law, requesting takedown…

There is a third option which I'm surprised no one has mentioned so far: Ignore them. First, people or companies using the cracked version of your software were never going to buy it. These people do not pay for software, and nothing you do will convince them to pay for it. Secondly, whatever measures you put in place to combat the cracked versions will potentially have a negative impact on your actual paying users -…

> These people do not pay for software, and nothing you do will convince them to pay for it.

I have pirated person when I was a poor student where it literally was money for food vs buying some software. I buy all my (commercial) software now that I can easily afford it and support multiple open source projects with donations. And the software houses, Bands and filmers who have seen the most of my money have been precisely the ones whose work I liked before.

The creators who have not been assholes about it (or even had some kind of humor in their response) are well remembered.

Sure there might be people who pirate everything out of principle, but my guess is that the majority will only do it if they can't help it any better.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#282

Post by joshxyz »

It's free marketing also since your product name will now show up in warez sites.

Most people who pirate it arent your target paying users anyway, because obviously they are broke, and most of it are even teens just trying softwares left and right.

It's a nice nudge to improve your licensing verification process also.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#283

Post by SillyUsername »

yakireev wrote: post #275
SillyUsername wrote: post #269

Release a version that is also "cracked" and distribute it widely. Make sure this version breaks after 10 days (so user doesn't suspect) and inserts garbage into whatever it produces after this time. Ensure your accepted EULA states that if it isn't purchased you can do this of course. When users also complain of a bug specific to this cracked version, in order to help, ask for their contact details, email and produc…

> Make sure this version breaks after 10 days (so user doesn't suspect) and inserts garbage into whatever it produces after this time. "That software of yours? Yeah, I tried it once and it was garbage, couldn't even save its own output properly. Now you want me to buy it for... wait, how much?"

Already been done

https://m.slashdot.org/story/185397

and

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADE

There are also other games, one whose name eludes me, that deliberately couldn't be completed if it detected it was cracked (and effectively acted as a demo by doing so).

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#284

Post by fsloth »

scarface74 wrote: post #276
fragmede wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A full actual version of SOLIDWORKS costs, no joke, $10,000 for a professional license ($8k plus $2k/yr support contract). An engineer at, say, Tesla is going to have that paid for by their employer while designing the Cybertruck. That Tesla engineer is also going to want to use SOLIDWORKS to design their bike shed. Their two choices for their bike shed are either use their work computer, or pirate it. (Using non-sol…

When I worked at GE, anyone could buy a copy of MS Office for $10 - full version not the subscription. Why not bundle a separate license for individuals with the enterprise license.

The value of deliverable asset (document etc) from MS Office for the regular user is insignificant. The value of deliverable from a professional CAD application otoh, always has a price that likely non-trivial and plausibly much more than the 10k yearly license or so. E.g. A multi-month project with all of the relevant design data.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#285

Post by antifa »

rightbyte wrote: post #262
pclmulqdq wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam seems to have significantly reduced the market for pirated games. Streaming did that for movies for a while, until every single production company decided start their own.

The difference is that it is always possible to rip a movie but cracking games with server side computations could be practically impossible.

For me, personally, writing my own replacement server would be easier than cracking a binary client.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#286

Post by thedougd »

xtracto wrote: post #255
thedougd wrote: post #56

I've recently reverse engineered a bunch of commercial software we pay for. They encrypt values in text configuration files and leave no way for us to template the configuration files with configuration management (Chef, Ansible, etc). Most of the time I'm working with Java. I've noticed several common patterns: 1) Typically obfuscation is not used, but even when it is used, it's easy to find what you're looking for.…

A long time ago, in a mexican company far far away we needed to download some files from a Bank to automate some process... but to do that the bank would force us to use some crappy custom client software that was windows only. We reverse engineer it and it turned to be simply hitting a predefined endpoint for an encrypted file that then was encrypted with a hard coded custom script . We happily extracted the auth da…

IBM (Sterling) Connect:Direct comes to mind.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#287

Post by antifa »

dmarlow wrote: post #24
bitexploder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even be cheeky. Detect when the software is cracked (signature/binary hash changed) and message the user “we see your version is corrupt or cracked, you may want to reinstall. If you are using this software without paying for it ”. You can invest some time in obfuscation and more frequent releases, but I would not spend a lot of effort on it.

Also a note about the dangers of cracked software. There could be malware, viruses, etc. The value becomes much smaller to use something that could ransomware your system. Then, cracked software becomes free advertising!

I've only gotten malware twice in my life. It was on windows and in came from the ads on a reputable normal website.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#288

Post by ern0 »

Okay, Apple is different from your company in as many ways as possible, but you might want to pay attention for their licensing policy: Logic X has no copy protection, no registration key, no nothing. Nothing to crack. If you get a pirate version, and using it for a while, you can buy it. They even provide a free version of it, with less functionality and larger icons, called Garage Band.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#289

Post by yakireev »

SillyUsername wrote: post #283
yakireev wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make sure this version breaks after 10 days (so user doesn't suspect) and inserts garbage into whatever it produces after this time. "That software of yours? Yeah, I tried it once and it was garbage, couldn't even save its own output properly. Now you want me to buy it for... wait, how much?"

Already been done https://m.slashdot.org/story/185397 and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FADE There are also other games, one whose name eludes me, that deliberately couldn't be completed if it detected it was cracked (and effectively acted as a demo by doing so).

Heard about the first one, but not about FADE, thanks for the link.

If anything, this demonstrates how unpopular this idea is. Of dozens games released and cracked every year, after 40 years of PC gaming, how many tried this strategy? A handful? Also, I now checked some of these games at my favorite torrent tracker, and yes, they are there, they are cracked, and there are no complaints about these defense systems in comments.

And these are games. I wonder if anyone has ever tried that with more useful software, and if they had any success with this strategy.

edit: I now realize I might have met this "in the wild". In my case the game was "The Legend of Kyrandia", and my cracked version could not be completed indeed.

All this trick achieved was making that kid who was me frustrated and unhappy. The game did not explain what was wrong, and there were exactly zero ways I could get a legal copy in Russia in 1999 anyway.

I got a better cracked copy later though. Nice game, do recommend.

Re: Ask HN: We found a cracked version of our software on the web, now what?

#290

Post by puffoflogic »

DarrenDev wrote: post #168
PreInternet01 wrote: post #29

Congratulations! Having cracked versions out there indicates that your software is both useful and notable, which is a point where many developers would love to arrive at, maybe, one day. As to what to do about it, there are two basic tracks, neither of which is incompatible with the other: 1. The legal route: notifying distribution sites that they're hosting content in violation of copyright law, requesting takedown…

There is a third option which I'm surprised no one has mentioned so far: Ignore them. First, people or companies using the cracked version of your software were never going to buy it. These people do not pay for software, and nothing you do will convince them to pay for it. Secondly, whatever measures you put in place to combat the cracked versions will potentially have a negative impact on your actual paying users -…

> First, people or companies using the cracked version of your software were never going to buy it.

Or, they would never have bought it if unable to obtain a pirated copy, but now that they've tried it, may purchase. Admittedly this is more true of games than other software. When I compare my steam library to my pirated library, many of my favorite games are in the overlap: I tried them first, loved them, and then bought them.

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