Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

scarybeastsecurity.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#71

Post by parsimo2010 »

Some thoughts:

1. I love how half the comments here are about disc/disk, which was just a passing comment in the article.

2. I really like reading these sorts of stories where modern hackers figure out the tricks used in vintage technology. They're interesting, and makes me feel a little better that all the clever hackers haven't died off yet. Sometimes I feel like the power of modern computers has made people lazy and we're going to lose our ability for clever solutions. But maybe the clever people are still there.

3. If you like reading about copy protection and (I can't believe I'm about to call the PS1 vintage) vintage tech, you might like this story about the copy protection for Spyro on the PS1. It wasn't so much copy protection as it was punishment after the copying. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GYSeXLr5sY

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#72

Post by nicoburns »

tomc1985 wrote: post #69

Is "disc" British English? I have always understood "disk" to mean a floppy disk or hard disk (as short for diskette), and "disc" to refer to circular discs like CDs. (Yes, disks have discs inside them but they are squareish to hold) Seeing people refer to floppy disks as discs really bugs me for some reason.

> Is "disc" British English?

Yes, more or less. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_of_disc

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#73

Post by mattl »

tremon wrote: post #42
panzagl wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the US 80-90's (c64/Amiga/DOS), I remember it as "disk". I always thought "disc" was European in origin.

We also used hard disk/floppy disk here in Europe (NL). My recollection is as the GP says, "disc" was only consistently used for optical discs (CD, DVD, BR). It may still be that "disc" is European in origin -- the original CD came from Philips (NL) and Sony (JP) -- but for computer components, I've never seen it spelled "disc".

Weirdly BR is BD.

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#74

Post by caf »

MagnumOpus wrote: post #50
garmaine wrote: post #12

Wouldn’t this be trivial to defeat once you know how it works though? Make a bit-for-bit copy, then overwrite track 9 with the new obfuscated lengths.

Once you know how it works, you would just overwrite the checks for track 9 with NOPs (or a fancy picture of your cracking team’s logo)...

Although the GPs suggestion would stand a chance of creating a generic copier for disks protected using this method, rather than having to individually crack each title.

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#75

Post by RuggedPineapple »

MisterTea wrote: post #31
carapace wrote: post #5

Who recalls the provenance of this old legend about the fellow who challenged his pal to decode a certain floppy? It was a bog-standard DOS boot disk (IIRC) that he could put in his machine and boot normally. But his pal put it in his computer and... nothing doing, no boot. Analysis of the floppy availed not. The challenge went unmet. What did our hero do to make the floppy? .esrever ni nups evird eht os ytiralop eti…

This reminds me of a less interesting story: My father bought a 386 for his work to replace a 286 which only had a 5.25 floppy drive. The 386 had both a 3.5 and 5.25 floppy drive so he quickly switched to the more sturdy 3.5 disks and moved a lot of work to the 3.5's. Everything was working great until he got a second similarly spec'd 386. For some reason the machines couldn't read each others 3.5" disks. So he calle…

Somewhat related, but as 800k floppies got harder and harder to find, it became common to just cover one hole on a 1.44 mb floppy so the computers that used them (mostly old compact macs) would treat them as 800k disks. This is fine in the short term but since the tracks and what not don't line up quite right it'll usually degrade over time.

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#76

Post by Dylan16807 »

caf wrote: post #74
MagnumOpus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you know how it works, you would just overwrite the checks for track 9 with NOPs (or a fancy picture of your cracking team’s logo)...

Although the GPs suggestion would stand a chance of creating a generic copier for disks protected using this method, rather than having to individually crack each title.

Only if they use the same obfuscation and put the data in the same spot. So it's like any kind of copy protection, you can make a "generic" copier/patcher if and only if a bunch of titles implement it the same way.

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#77

Post by garmaine »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #49
garmaine wrote: post #12

Wouldn’t this be trivial to defeat once you know how it works though? Make a bit-for-bit copy, then overwrite track 9 with the new obfuscated lengths.

The same goes for any copy protection. If you understand how it works, you can change the code to bypass it. So it's "trivial" after you do the hard part. The clever thing is that it forces you to do the hard part without special hardware.

Not really. The PSX copy protection, for example, couldn’t be written by standard CD-R writers.

Re: The cleverest floppy disc protection ever? Western Security Ltd

#79

Post by Dylan16807 »

garmaine wrote: post #77
Dylan16807 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same goes for any copy protection. If you understand how it works, you can change the code to bypass it. So it's "trivial" after you do the hard part. The clever thing is that it forces you to do the hard part without special hardware.

Not really. The PSX copy protection, for example, couldn’t be written by standard CD-R writers.

I'm talking about understanding how it works on a code level. You don't need to write the special disk out if you're patching the code, like this article does.
Post reply on HN