Software cracking

From Free net encyclopedia

Software cracking is the modification of software to remove encoded copy prevention. Distribution of cracked software ("warez"), or patches to circumvent software protection on software (commonly known as "cracks") is generally an illegal (or more recently, criminal) act of copyright infringement.

1 Legality
2 Methods
3 History
4 Industry Response
5 External links

[edit]

Legality

The use and distribution of cracked copies is illegal in almost every developed country. There have been many lawsuits over cracking software, but most have been to do with the distribution of cracked software rather than the actual cracking of software, because it is too hard to prove a person is personally responsible for cracking the software.

In the United States, the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) legislation made software cracking, as well as the distribution of information which enables software cracking, illegal. However, the law has hardly been tested in the U.S. judiciary in a case of reverse-engineering for personal use only, and many feel the DMCA is unenforcable in this area.

The European Union passed the European Union Copyright Directive in May 2001, making illegal software copyright infringement in member states.

[edit]

Methods

The most common software crack is the modification of an application's binary to cause or prevent a specific key branch in the program's execution. This is accomplished by reverse engineering the compiled program code using a debugger such as SoftICE or gdb until the software cracker reaches the subroutine that contains the primary method of protecting the software. The binary is then modified using the debugger or a hex editor in a manner that replaces a prior branching opcode with its complement or a NOP opcode so the key branch will either always execute a specific subroutine or skip over it. Almost all common software cracks are a variation of this type. Software developers are constantly developing techniques such as code obfuscation and encryption to make this modification increasingly difficult.

Another example is a crack that removes the trial period from shareware or trials making the product function as the full unlocked version. These cracks are usually programs that patch the program executable and sometimes the .dll or .so linked to the application. Similar cracks are available for software that requires a hardware dongle.

A company can also break the copy preventions of programs that they have legally purchased but that are licensed to particular hardware, so that there is no risk of downtime due to hardware failure (and, of course, no need to restrict oneself to running the software on bought hardware only).

There are a number of sites on the Internet that let users download cracks for popular games and applications (although at the danger of acquiring malicious software that is sometimes distributed via such sites). Although these cracks are used by legal buyers of software they can also be used by people who have downloaded or otherwise obtained pirated software (often through P2P networks).

[edit]

History

Template:Expand The first software copy protection was on early Apple II and Commodore 64 software. Game publishers, in particular, carried on an arms race with software crackers. Lately in the 21st century, publishers have resorted to desperate and damaging measures, such as StarForce, to stop pirates from distributing their software.

Most of the early software crackers were young computer hobbyists who often formed groups that competed against each other in the cracking and spreading of software. Breaking a new copy protection scheme as quickly as possible was often regarded as an opportunity to demonstrate one's technical superiority rather than a possibility of money-making. The cracker groups of the 1980's started to advertise themselves and their skills by attaching animated screens known as crack intros in the software programs they cracked and released. Once the technical competition had expanded from the challenges of cracking to the challenges of creating visually stunning intros, the foundations for a new subculture known as demoscene were established. Demoscene started to separate itself from the illegal "warez scene" during the 1990's and is now regarded as a completely different subculture.

[edit]

Industry Response

Apple has begun incorporating TCPA/TPM DRM in such applications as Rosetta. Parts of the operating system not fully x86 native run through the Rosetta PPC emulator, which in turn requires the TPM for proper operation.

Microsoft is planning to reduce common Windows based software cracking with the release of the Fritz-chip. This is in combination with the NGSCB in Windows Vista.

[edit]