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111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

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Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#161

Post by seanp2k2 »

nicolas_t wrote: post #159
wkat4242 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True yes but a lot of cracks are real and still include malware. And it can even be introduced remotely. A malware downloader is a few lines of code hidden among millions. Also analyzing malware tends to make one more paranoid. This is definitely a thing too. And the most powerful features of it like hexrays require cloud cooperation so they don't work :( I really wish it was affordable for individuals because I woul…

Yes, if only IDA pro had a hobbyist license :(

luckily, Ghidra exists now

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#163

Post by seanp2k2 »

treeman79 wrote: post #70
SpaceL10n wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird reading about my life as if it's history. Everyone was doing it. I remember my teachers, friends, and family all giving me pirated software at some point. I remember my friends and I getting excited when someone got a ripped copy of some game and we couldn't wait to burn new CD-ROMs to share. If one of us got our hands on the copy of some game, we all got copies. It was kind of like a free-for-all in the w…

Linus from Tech Tips still pirates windows. He even has a whole video on why. https://youtu.be/M3bezYerYxQ

MassGrave exists these days but almost all laptops come with a Win10/11 license anyway now, probably enough legal grey area to CYA for personal use but I wouldn’t risk it for anything for-profit, even a startup.

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#164

Post by seanp2k2 »

twawaaay wrote: post #8

It may sound strange to people who were born later. But in 90s these mechanisms were in infancy. It was normal for computers to auto-login and have no password at all, processes could each read entire memory on the machine. Software was cracked the moment it came out and it was assumed people bought any software because they feared legal action rather than because they had no other way to get their hands on it -- lat…

I still remember that all 7s and IIRC all 8s works in Quake 3 Arena as a CD key too. I found this out button-mashing as a kid after my actual CD key wouldn’t take. Probably something screwy with their CD key verification algo that probably just passes stuff around internally as 1 or something. I’m sure this is some whole sub-genre of cryptography — finding inputs that break the verification calculations — but I don’t know the name of it beyond “cracking”, albeit “non-patching-based”.

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#165

Post by NDizzle »

kdtsh wrote: post #133
SpaceL10n wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird reading about my life as if it's history. Everyone was doing it. I remember my teachers, friends, and family all giving me pirated software at some point. I remember my friends and I getting excited when someone got a ripped copy of some game and we couldn't wait to burn new CD-ROMs to share. If one of us got our hands on the copy of some game, we all got copies. It was kind of like a free-for-all in the w…

The revelation for me was when a school friend of mine in the early 2000s told me about a site called crack.cd which had serials or keygens for practically any software I wanted. It was a whole new world, I loved it. Only had to nuke my computer once after a keygen turned out to be a virus! (The other occasion on which I lost everything was when I was installing Ubuntu 5.10 ‘Breezy Badger’ for dual booting with Windo…

I used those sites to find new software to check out. The popular stuff had to be good, right?

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#166

Post by nonethewiser »

vidanay wrote: post #32
SpaceL10n wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird reading about my life as if it's history. Everyone was doing it. I remember my teachers, friends, and family all giving me pirated software at some point. I remember my friends and I getting excited when someone got a ripped copy of some game and we couldn't wait to burn new CD-ROMs to share. If one of us got our hands on the copy of some game, we all got copies. It was kind of like a free-for-all in the w…

I remember the days of cracked software on Apple II systems. The crackers would add custom splash screens advertising themselves. http://artscene.textfiles.com/intros/APPLEII/

Keygen music is another similar relic. They are chiptunes included in cracked software. Their names were often just whatever software they were cracking. I like Adobe Create Suite 4 here https://youtube.com/watch?v=FVX6t-ivMfE&feature=share

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#167

Post by nobleach »

metadat wrote: post #39
YPPH wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>was normal for computers to auto-login and have no password This persisted for longer than it should have on Windows! I remember on Windows XP Home Edition, you could just press Ctrl Alt Delete to drop to the classic winlogon.exe screen and then log in as "Administrator" with no password! By that time, though, Microsoft had implemented product activation. To my knowledge, no one ever cracked the telephone activation…

Devils0wn Windows XP Final serial key, yeah baby! Seared into my mind forever after entering it so much: FCKGW-RHQQ2-YXKRT-8TG6W-2B7Q8 I used to reinstall windows anytime anything got weird, which was often because I was always messing with disabling combinations of system services in attempts to reduce OS memory consumption. Wtf is svchost.exe doing? I don't want it! Wireless Zero Config? I don't have Wi-Fi, too fla…

As soon as the parent mentioned memorizing keys, the FCKGW key came to mind!

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#169

Post by MexicanJoe »

tastysandwich wrote: post #80

I recently wanted to use a program for a short amount of time for personal use, but the trial period was only 7 days. I used strace to find that it kept the timestamp of its first run in a text file, and would read that on startup. Deleting that completely reset the trial period. I was pretty amazed - I know most people aren't computer savvy to bypass trial periods, but I figured there'd be third-party libraries a de…

I even used that on a piece of software last year to extend the trial period. It was good software, so I brought it afterward. But I was surprised that the old trick still worked.

Re: 111-1111111 is a valid Windows 95 key (2021) [video]

#170

Post by Razengan »

vxxzy wrote: post #3

Interesting! I once lost my original StarCraft CD Key. In a desperate attempt to simply install and play the game I tried converting “StarCraft” to numbers using A1Z26 cipher. Honesty didn’t know it at the time what to call what I was doing. I was just a kid! But, guess what? It worked! It only worked for local play. BattleNet did not see it as a valid key. I like to think some SWE somewhere hid that in there on purp…

StarCraft was my first attempt and success at "cracking" a game!

Apparently it had a bug where it didn't recognize the CD on Windows 98 but it worked on Windows 95!

Didn't have internet, so I fired up Visual Studio, stepped through the .exe, and tried flipping each JE/JNE or JZ/JNZ instruction that came before the copy protection error showed up.

It worked!! I searched for the sequence of instructions in a hex editor and modified the exe. And it led me to one of the best games ever to this date. :)

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