[deadmetheny]

>The phrase 'if you're not the customer, you're the product' comes to mind

That doesn't really apply to the warez scene. People aren't releasing cracked software for profit, they're doing it for the challenge and to say they were the first to do it. It's pure ego.

[snet0]

I think that's almost certainly the case for the people actually cracking the software, but because a lot of the time there isn't like a "Steam Store for Cracked Videogames" or similar for software, it can require significant effort to find the canonical source.

If you know of some common Adobe patcher tool, or Windows activator, and just do a Google search for its name, what fraction of those download links will have a matching hash to the original release?

You are right that, in the non-repackaged-with-additional-malware case, it seems a lot of the guys doing the cracking are just puzzle-solvers. Weeks to crack some Ubisoft DRM but probably never even touched the game.

[meepmorp]

I'm not sure that precludes that cracked software being redistributed with added malware.