| SoftICE holds a fond place in my heart even though I was never more than passingly capable with it. I worked at Numega from 1999 through 2001 in the technical support department. When I started, I provided support for another product, but over time became familiar with all of the tools and eventually managed the technical support team. We would frequently get support requests from companies asking for ways to detect and/or prevent SoftICE, and we had some nice reply templates trying to break it gently to them how there was no practical way for software loaded after SoftICE to reliably stop a determined user from debugging and/or tampering with it. The SoftICE tech support issues were always the tough ones. We had a small team of elites who would slog through those issues while the other team members could only wonder what they were talking about sometimes. :) Some companies even resorted to shipping hardware to the team to help reproduce and resolve tough issues. My favorite memory though is when I was learning SoftICE and I grabbed one of the guys and asked them if they could help me figure out a weird issue with it. As we walked over, I shared with them that every time I broke into SoftICE, my CRT monitor would shut off, and it wouldn't come back on until I closed SoftICE. I asked them if it could be some sort of new countermeasure. They looked at me with that disbelieving look one shares with a mere novice, and sat down at my computer and pressed Ctrl-D. Click! Off went the monitor. Their eyes bugged just a bit and they tentatively toggled the power switch just to make sure. Dead. With hesitation, they typed the command to close the SoftICE window and blinked as the monitor hummed back to life. As I said though, these guys were good. After hitting Ctrl-D a few more times and watching the monitor switch off and on, this person didn't let the mystery send them down any rabbit holes. They immediately went fishing for the monitor power cable and traced it to the plug where they found a suspicious looking box it was plugged into. As they looked back at me with a glare, I guiltily held up the remote control for the power switch and fessed up. Good times. |