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Reverse engineering a software crack

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21–30 of 95 posts

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#21
post #4

This was a pretty long read and I didn't really get much from it. The format of a million tweets is awful. tl;dr it patches the executable by having a shim dll that does the patch when it gets loaded. Pretty common in the game modding community. It finds where it needs to patch by scanning for a byte pattern. What does the actual patch do? No idea, that's what I was waiting for and I never got it. I was expecting a d…

Because the whole article can be written in 2 tweets but you need that social media “interaction”, so the author goes on talking about non essential things. The crack itself is simple and smart to bypass the check by changing the public key, the only issue from what I have seen is there’s a lot of hardcoded stuff like the key and the functions numbers, so most likely it won’t work in future updates.

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#22

If anyone is interested in crackers and their motivation, you might find this interview interesting: https://successfulsoftware.net/2011/04/07/interview-with-a-c...

The first software I cracked was in 2004 (some video converter software), the motivation was simply that I can’t afford it, but the “feeling” you get after is like a drug, then it’s more of a challenge knowing that it’s doable no matter what, just like lock picking, then that spark just dies and you stop cracking them.

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#23
post #4

This was a pretty long read and I didn't really get much from it. The format of a million tweets is awful. tl;dr it patches the executable by having a shim dll that does the patch when it gets loaded. Pretty common in the game modding community. It finds where it needs to patch by scanning for a byte pattern. What does the actual patch do? No idea, that's what I was waiting for and I never got it. I was expecting a d…

Is this akin to using LD_PRELOAD on Linux to hook something like __libc_start_main and modifying specific data in one of the data sections of the ELF binary or something?

Yes

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#24
post #4

This was a pretty long read and I didn't really get much from it. The format of a million tweets is awful. tl;dr it patches the executable by having a shim dll that does the patch when it gets loaded. Pretty common in the game modding community. It finds where it needs to patch by scanning for a byte pattern. What does the actual patch do? No idea, that's what I was waiting for and I never got it. I was expecting a d…

I feel like this person is trying to copy Foone's voice but just doesn't get it

'This person' sounds like cts being cts doing cts things. Don't see why you'd think they're copying Foone.

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#25
post #22

If anyone is interested in crackers and their motivation, you might find this interview interesting: https://successfulsoftware.net/2011/04/07/interview-with-a-c...

The first software I cracked was in 2004 (some video converter software), the motivation was simply that I can’t afford it, but the “feeling” you get after is like a drug, then it’s more of a challenge knowing that it’s doable no matter what, just like lock picking, then that spark just dies and you stop cracking them.

Cracked plenty software back in the day but mostly for personal use.

For the challenge, and because I disliked software being tied to a specific storage medium.

It was a sport to minimize changes. Like pad out a single assembly instruction with NOPs, change a conditional jump into unconditional one, etc.

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#26
post #4

This was a pretty long read and I didn't really get much from it. The format of a million tweets is awful. tl;dr it patches the executable by having a shim dll that does the patch when it gets loaded. Pretty common in the game modding community. It finds where it needs to patch by scanning for a byte pattern. What does the actual patch do? No idea, that's what I was waiting for and I never got it. I was expecting a d…

I feel like this person is trying to copy Foone's voice but just doesn't get it

Cybersec twitter is just awful. Everything has to be a call out or a dunk on someone/some company. It's all so negative.

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#27
post #21
post #4

This was a pretty long read and I didn't really get much from it. The format of a million tweets is awful. tl;dr it patches the executable by having a shim dll that does the patch when it gets loaded. Pretty common in the game modding community. It finds where it needs to patch by scanning for a byte pattern. What does the actual patch do? No idea, that's what I was waiting for and I never got it. I was expecting a d…

Because the whole article can be written in 2 tweets but you need that social media “interaction”, so the author goes on talking about non essential things. The crack itself is simple and smart to bypass the check by changing the public key, the only issue from what I have seen is there’s a lot of hardcoded stuff like the key and the functions numbers, so most likely it won’t work in future updates.

[deleted]

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#29

What is interesting here is that a signed piece of software can pick up an unsigned dll, execute it, and that execution causes a compromise of the system.

Raymond Chen has a ton of "being on the other side of the airtight hatchway" articles.

Most relevant I found: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200420-00/?p=10...

Probably in this case the installation of the crack requires admin privileges to modify files in "Program Files" folder. Boom, you've broken the rules ;)

Re: Reverse engineering a software crack

#30
A nice topic and insight if not for the way it is written. I could not finish it. It feels the author is unable to articulate his thoughts without interjecting curses and write incoherently. Is this how people communicate technically in the newer generations?
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