[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.