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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?

#81

Post by moralestapia »

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…

>Congratulations!

Indeed! There's a nice anecdote from Paulo Coehlo (I don't like his work but w/e) where he was stuck in traffic somewhere in LATAM and a guy passed by his car selling pirated copies of his newest book. He then says this event made him feel like he had finally made it and even became a strong promoter of piracy, heh.

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

#82

Post by paxys »

jeffwask wrote: post #44

Nothing. Almost all of the research points to piracy having zero impact on sales for example, https://corsearch.com/content-library/blog/does-piracy-impac... It's been shown time and again in gaming no matter what you do people will crack it and your measures to stop them will have more negative impact on your paying customers than it does on pirates, see Denuvo. Honestly, the best thing is probably working on your c…

Denuvo's purpose is to stop piracy for the first few weeks of release, since that is when the bulk of a game's sales happen. No one cares if it gets cracked after that. Many publishers themselves remove Denuvo protection from their games after a set period of time. By those measures it is an incredibly successful and effective piece of software.

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

#84

Post by josephcsible »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #54
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 was a videogame that got famous because it was pirated, it was a management game about setting up a gaming company. Turns out, the pirated copy had a special feature where the player would feel immense economic pressure from piracy, so a bunch of players asked how to win against this, it was pretty hard and really fun for people who knew what was going on. Point is, you could hide an Easter Egg for pirated vers…

Here's the full story of that: https://www.greenheartgames.com/2013/04/29/what-happens-when...

It's important to note that they didn't use DRM or anything like that to detect whether a given copy of it was pirated. They made two builds of the game: a normal one that they gave to paying customers, and the special one that they uploaded a torrent of themselves.

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

#85

Post by KomoD »

vorpalhex wrote: post #42
hh3k0 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t demonize your user base […] Build multiple telemetry code paths in your code — if you can just get IP addresses of offenders you’ll have way more info than now. Sorry, but from where I stand that absolutely looks like demonizing the user base.

I think the parent means more "analyze why they are pirating" (is your price for a given too country in a weird spot, is it an unapproved software purchase, etc)

The "why" is easy to find out without tracking all your users.

> A license costs a few thousand dollars

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

#86

Post by WASDx »

Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #54
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 was a videogame that got famous because it was pirated, it was a management game about setting up a gaming company. Turns out, the pirated copy had a special feature where the player would feel immense economic pressure from piracy, so a bunch of players asked how to win against this, it was pretty hard and really fun for people who knew what was going on. Point is, you could hide an Easter Egg for pirated vers…

I love this approach. If you can detect a crack and block it, it will get worked around. Injecting easter eggs is much more subtle. There was another game that made an otherwise easy jump between two platforms impossible, so the players who had cracked the game went on forums and unwittingly revealed themselves by asking how to complete that level.

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

#87

Post by selectodude »

jeffwask wrote: post #58
OrderlyTiamat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe denuvo is by now more a success story than a failure, there's not many groups cracking the latest versions of denuvo anymore.

That's not consistent with anything I've seen or read in the last 5 years https://www.wired.com/story/empress-drm-cracking-denuvo-vide... https://www.pcgamer.com/denuvo-cracks-2019/

There's only one person still cracking Denuvo games, Empress.

She's falling behind though. https://www.reddit.com/r/EmpressEvolution/

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

#88

Post by kobalsky »

bitexploder wrote: post #18
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #12

I’d suggest taking a page from Adobe and Microsoft. They fight pirating, and that prevents it from becoming absolutely endemic, but they don’t really lose massive amounts of sleep over the cracks, because every cracked copy is training people to use their software. Sort of “The Old Dope Peddler” model. It’s not really correct to assume every cracked copy is a lost sale. Instead, think of it as indoctrination of possi…

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.

am I the only one that thinks that the remote possibility of showing this message to a legit customer by mistake outweights any benefit it could bring?

you are not gonna guilt anyone into not pirating and if the message blocks or is annoying, crackers are gonna circumvent it just like they did the license check.

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

#90

Post by KomoD »

908B64B197 wrote: post #77
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's a third option: If the software supports getting updates, get the cracked copies to phone home and have a legal firm send them a warning they might be using hacked software. Home users won't care, but legitimate businesses might convert to actual sales.

How would you send them a warning, you'd know nothing other than an IP address? If you just send the ISP a regular ol' "copyright" notice, there's a lot of ISPs who do not forward those notices.

And if you made cracked copies phone home, that's something that would get removed by the cracker anyway most of the time.

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