[x0054]

That's why I am of a firm belief that if you are going to pirate software, at least have the common decency to crack it your self and NOT REDISTRIBUTE.

On a side note I am amazed that more developers do not sign their own code with checksums and alteration verification routines. Sign your software, then do a runtime check if the code has been altered. If so, after few hours of use, present the user with a nice message:

"Congratulations, you have a cracked copy of our software. We find it sad that you did not want to buy it from us. It's possible that we may starve as a result. In any case, we would like you to stop using this copy. To encourage you to do so we are going to begin now uploading the contents of your hard drive to our servers. You may stop this process at any time by closing the program and removing it from your computer. Thank you."

[rangibaby]

This DRM just turns things into an arms race, and eventually makes your software seem more and more like malware.

A non-game example off the top of my head is Milkshape 3d, a basic modelling software that was popular in the early 00s because it had importers and exporters for the games that were wildly popular then such as Counter-Strike.

The teenagers using it had no money to pay for the full version, so cracking of it was rife. Eventually the "anti-piracy" mechanisms built into it by the author got crazy enough that the program was essentially broken.

I can't really remember specifics, except that it crashed your computer (!) if you tried to use a certain app-sniffing software.

[anonymous]

For a game example, google "starforce breaking dvd drives". The irony(?) here being that an on-disc copy protection mechanism breaks your disc reader and makes it impossible to play the game you bought.

[stevekemp]

I've cracked games, for lives, and so on, since I was about 14 years old. Then later I used to turn "demo" versions of PC-software into full versions and the vast majority of all the programs I attacked were trivial to defeat.

People tend to only add in the protection at the last minute; rather than making it an integral part of the code.

I only ever came up against a few programs that I couldn't hack. It genuinely became easier when people would use an off-the-shelf "protect my program" toolkit; crack one and you'd cracked all programs using that family of protection.

It was rare that I couldn't register demo/eval copies of programs. Sure I know assembly, and used SoftIce, but we're talking about a random guy in his late teens/early twenties who mostly learned by trial and error with random hints from +fravia.

(ObRandom: I know it must be a pain as a developer, but the best way to stop people cracking your demo is literally to have two binaries. Genuinely don't compile "file:save" or whatever feature you're keeping for paid users, into your demo version. Sure this will stop instant registration, and it won't stop somebody from leaking a full version, but it will absolutely stop the majority of attacks.)

[pakitan]

> I know it must be a pain as a developer, but the best way to stop people cracking your demo is literally to have two binaries

I have done that but I'm not sure it's really the best way. My stats are very far from being statistically significant but I'd say this type of protection has increased the fraudulent (stolen credit card) orders about tenfold for me. Which means that if I don't catch it on time I'm hit with $15 chargeback fee. It's really frustrating because I've deliberately made the trial version very easy to crack. I have no problems with cracked copies floating around, I just didn't want serial codes being freely available.

[fauigerzigerk]

That's completely pointless. If a cracker is able to remove the license check he will also be able to remove your checksum verification.

Putting yourself in a difficult legal position on top of it helps no one.

[eps]

Well-implemented integrity checks are much harder to remove compared to nop'ing single conditional jump.

[x0054]

Ok, to be clear, the uploading of the hard drive content is a joke. I would not suggest you actually do it for legal and ethical reasons. As for DRM, I think Total Commander is a good example of good software protection in action. When I was a kid and could not afford to buy it, I tried to crack it a few times, with no luck. Nowadays, I own a copy, but just for fun I tried to crack it a few times, for educational purposes :), and still could not. If you are interested, take a look at it, I think TC has a very non intrusive DRM that works well but is not draconian. Of course, you can still grab a stollen key for it from any torrent site, but to my knowledge at least no one has cracked it yet.

[jacquesm]

Please do not follow this advice.