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The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

jeff-vogel.blogspot.com

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Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#51

Post by tptacek »

DarkShikari wrote: post #35

"Probably work"? It was already cracked two weeks before release! From a few days ago on Buzz: Just saw a post on the Steam Forum for Assassin's Creed 2 that the impossible to beat, always online, can't save your game or even play the stupid thing without being connected to the internet DRM for it has already been cracked 2 weeks before its release. sigh Did Ubisoft really expect this to work any better than previous…

That's a good point, and it does refute the post, but there are content protection schemes in major titles that haven't been broken; I imagine you pay more attention to games than I do, and I can't name anything I'm thinking of.

(I'm not sure I can name a title that is unplayable cracked because of content protection; I'd broaden my definition to other security objectives besides piracy).

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#52

Post by tptacek »

stcredzero wrote: post #31
tumult wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could do that. Run some portions of the game on the server, which would remove some of the game logic from the client, making any sort of crack to require adding back in instead of simply stripping out logic. They probably will not do anything non-trivial for this. It costs money to run servers, and they would have to run much more powerful servers in order to be running game logic for each player. That would ea…

They don't actually have to run portions of the game on the servers. They can just serve bits of logic code back to the client as certain milestones are met. You can easily cause 1000's of halting points in a program at the price of just a few kilobytes of data this way. The point is not to make a game hack-proof. Just to make the time to crack long enough for your purposes. (In this case, it just has to last a few m…

It's not settled computer science that the content protection problem always favors attackers, although it's clear that the state of the art does.

I'm only reacting to the "laws of physics" comment you're making. It's not true that "if you can execute it, you can read it", at least for important definitions of "read" (that include "understand" or "modify"). Take, for an example, white box cryptography.

Some problems clearly favor attackers (executing code on general purpose shared Von Neumann architectures with general purpose operating systems). Other problems favor defenders (the halting problem). It's also the case that, smart as (say) 'DarkShikari is, high-end performance graphics and systems coders are not necessarily expert practical compiler theory people.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#53

Post by marciovm123 »

tptacek wrote: post #49
cabalamat wrote: post #39

The solution to onerous DRM is: just don't buy any product using it. No-one needs to buy Assassin's Creed II; there are plenty of other computer games out there.

That's a valid point but it dodges the thrust of the post, which is that piracy is pushing the industry in this direction --- this is a mainstream title from a mainstream vendor that is making a clear and visible usability concession to protect the new release window from pirates. Most users probably won't care (remember that we're a disproportionately vocal minority --- or, you are; my job is to make these titles wo…

Agreed - I don't care at all and would buy this game if it was my style. Am I going to give up on having an internet connection at my place, ever? No. So how would this negatively affect me? A little bit of downtime? We all need bathroom breaks.

I understand the resentment at these anti-hacking measures given that this is a hacker community but not all companies choose to make their products in the open-source tradition, and that's a perfectly valid choice for them to make.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#54

Post by jcl »

cabalamat wrote: post #39

The solution to onerous DRM is: just don't buy any product using it. No-one needs to buy Assassin's Creed II; there are plenty of other computer games out there.

That's hardly a solution. There is no way, short of a massive letter-writing campaign, for a software publisher to look at flagging sales and know that it was due to onerous DRM. More likely, they'd blame it on piracy and go looking for even more restrictive DRM.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#55

Post by teamonkey »

DarkShikari wrote: post #35

"Probably work"? It was already cracked two weeks before release! From a few days ago on Buzz: Just saw a post on the Steam Forum for Assassin's Creed 2 that the impossible to beat, always online, can't save your game or even play the stupid thing without being connected to the internet DRM for it has already been cracked 2 weeks before its release. sigh Did Ubisoft really expect this to work any better than previous…

A lot of things are said on the Steam forum.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#56

Post by mikeryan »

cabalamat wrote: post #39

The solution to onerous DRM is: just don't buy any product using it. No-one needs to buy Assassin's Creed II; there are plenty of other computer games out there.

Alternatively stop stealing games and pay the game companies for their product and they wouldn't need to go to such great lengths to save their IP.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#57

Post by steveklabnik »

marciovm123 wrote: post #53
tptacek wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a valid point but it dodges the thrust of the post, which is that piracy is pushing the industry in this direction --- this is a mainstream title from a mainstream vendor that is making a clear and visible usability concession to protect the new release window from pirates. Most users probably won't care (remember that we're a disproportionately vocal minority --- or, you are; my job is to make these titles wo…

Agreed - I don't care at all and would buy this game if it was my style. Am I going to give up on having an internet connection at my place, ever? No. So how would this negatively affect me? A little bit of downtime? We all need bathroom breaks. I understand the resentment at these anti-hacking measures given that this is a hacker community but not all companies choose to make their products in the open-source tradit…

You'd put up with the game crashing and losing your save data when your internet gets a little bit wonky? I have fiber to my house within the city, and my connection still gets flaky at times.

And you're right, it is a valid choice. Doesn't mean their choice won't be criticized. This also has nothing to do with open source, and everything to do with treating your paying users like criminals. This pic from the other day is perfect: http://t1.xavimg.com/2010/02/piratelegal.jpg

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#58

Post by steveklabnik »

tptacek wrote: post #49
cabalamat wrote: post #39

The solution to onerous DRM is: just don't buy any product using it. No-one needs to buy Assassin's Creed II; there are plenty of other computer games out there.

That's a valid point but it dodges the thrust of the post, which is that piracy is pushing the industry in this direction --- this is a mainstream title from a mainstream vendor that is making a clear and visible usability concession to protect the new release window from pirates. Most users probably won't care (remember that we're a disproportionately vocal minority --- or, you are; my job is to make these titles wo…

You're right, many users won't care about the DRM. What they will care about is a game freezing up and crashing. They won't even realize it's from DRM issues.

I also wouldn't underestimate the tech chops of gamers. These are the guys who overclock hardware, do case mods... just because they're not hardcore hackers doesn't mean they don't understand or care about these issues.

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#59

Post by metamemetics »

tumult wrote: post #7

1. Make your own, free saved game server and alter the application code to use it. This means a lot of work and expense, both to duplicate Ubisoft's game saving code and to set up and maintain the servers. Won't happen. I'm not even a very good game hacker, and I've done much more dramatic things. It's really not a huge deal. People have reverse-engineered entire online game protocols in order to have their own unoff…

" their own unofficial servers before the games were even out of beta."

Now here's a real challenge: Starcraft 2 beta server

Re: The Awful Anti-Pirate System That Will Probably Work

#60

Post by samd »

gommm wrote: post #50
samd wrote: post #45

Here's a solution no one seems to consider: make video games cheaper. $50-$60 is an outrageously high price for a game, especially when most of them are of forgettable quality. The people over at Valve/Steam have been saying the same thing, and they would know, they see the sales numbers; cutting prices for their weekend deals greatly increase sales. If companies brought game prices down to a reasonable level, say $2…

Maybe, but on the other hand, on the app store where games are really inexpensive there is still a lot of piracy and a lot of developers can't make end meet because their price is too low... So, I'm not convinced that making video games cheaper is the answer...

Well obviously pricing them too low won't make you any money. There is a big difference between 25 dollars and 99 cents.
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