241–250 of 302 posts
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My grandma used to be playing casual games from a certain publisher on her PC. They were all trial versions, though, limited to 30 minutes or so. Turns out, the time left was stored in the registry, and didn’t have any validation – so when a 10 y.o. me made a quick edit, she was left with 4294967295 minutes of trial left.
Hope she knows she still only has 3million trial days left
The company i work at has the same problem. We have some old mission-critical windows 2000 pc that runs the rpg compiler, with attached dongle. This gave me some clues on where to start - thanks author!
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When I was a child, in the 90s, I did this all of the time. Input a unique string I could watch for, fire up SoftICE, watch for the string, and then step through until the == comparison happened, then either grab the calculated key and input it, or patch the comparison from == to != or just return true, depending on the implementation.
SoftICE was such a gift and pain in the ass. I did a massive crack that involved a program and it’s inf/dll hardware driver package. Some of the most rewarding work I’ve done and also just so tedious! Having to stop the OS like that and accidentally getting to the kernel but then not wanting to lose my position so having to hit step over and step out until just the right place… whew.
> I must say, this copy protection mechanism seems a bit… simplistic? A hardware dongle that just passes back a constant number? Defeatable with a four-byte patch? Nowadays we don't bother with copyright protection other than a license key, because we know enterprises generally will pay their bills if you put up any indication at all that a bill is required to be paid. This was basically the 80s version of that.
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Because 1. Physical dongle tends to break, and when it does, they expect us to give them replacing parts 2. They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. It's hard to leave their production critical apps broken like that once you know that the bugs can cause monetary or even life loss.
> They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. Maybe I'm the weird one to expect reasonably bug-free software, and if a bug is found, an eventual bugfix "for free"? ESPECIALLY if they cause monetary or life loss! A bug means the developer did not do their job. Let's not pretend this is OK.
Yeah, Software protection was very naive in the beginning. Fun fact: I owned a windows 3.11 for workgroup UPGRADE disc collection, it was clearly explained and also enforced from the setup installer. So, no previous installed win 3.0 == upgrade installer will fail. The fix: just create an empty Textfile named win.com at any place - the installer simple scans the WHOLE disk just for this existing filename. Next fun fa…
I have a childhood memory of my dad buying a shrink-wrapped copy of the Windows 3.1 Upgrade that was supposed to allow any installation of "3.0 or earlier" to become Win 3.1. it turned out when we actually tried it it only accepted 3.x though. [1] I think he ended up pirating a 3.x install from a friend and running the upgrade on to of that; felt pretty morally clear given what the box had advertised. [1]: eg https:/…
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Once it hits 70 years from the lifetime of the author (so probably another 80 or 90 years from now) and is in public domain, that might change things since there will no longer be copyright being protected. In terms of copyright terms, this software is still pretty young, not even halfway to public domain. It's disrespectful to call it "very old".
Defeating a copy protection measure is illegal, even if the copy protection measure is not copyrighted.
Surely if the work being protected isn't copyrighted, there's nothing to circumvent in terms of the DMCA?
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I have a childhood memory of my dad buying a shrink-wrapped copy of the Windows 3.1 Upgrade that was supposed to allow any installation of "3.0 or earlier" to become Win 3.1. it turned out when we actually tried it it only accepted 3.x though. [1] I think he ended up pirating a 3.x install from a friend and running the upgrade on to of that; felt pretty morally clear given what the box had advertised. [1]: eg https:/…
Love the Ebay link. Where has that been sitting for the last 30 years?
At a time where games have shit like always online DRM, it's a bit reassuring to remember that software developers making the experience worse for their customers isn't new. You pay for software? You need to keep that big dongle plugged in your computer all the time! You pirate the same software? No need for any dongle!
Use the decoder wheel (hopefully you didn't lose it) and put the code in to start the game.
Copy protection always punishes the customer and not the pirate.
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Well the software could disable itself when you stop paying. You stop paying for the value, the software stops providing you value.
Could the molecules from the food stop forming parts of my body?