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JVC Announces Technology To Prevent Software Copying
An anonymous reader writes: "JVC and Hudson soft Co. of Japan have created a technology that they claim to have tested on 200 CD-ROM devices that prevents users from copying software CDs. They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD-ROMs and which can not be read with ordinary procedures. They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack."
Nothing. Didn't you know that copy prevention isn't there to stop pirates, it's there to annoy legit users :)
... what about my right to make a backup copy of my software? Nobody's ever described a CD as durable.
But how does this differ from the keys on a dvd you have to circumvent when you rip them? I dont think any company can possibly safegaurd their software with a system that is up against millions of users....eventually there will be a way to get past it.
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
All we'll need to do is hack up Wine to report (But still perform) "strange" CD-ROM accesses. Then we'll know just what the program is looking up on the CD, and we could even get a traceback of the code (EIP, registers, etc). Then, just make a crack that swaps a JMP instruction for a JZ/JNZ...
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Yeah thats was probably just enough time...
I'll expect first proof of concepts compies of the Hack on source forge by morning...
Thanks...to who ever it was that just hacked it....
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
sounds like it is designed not to allow a cd-cd copy.
Why can't I just rip an image, or at least open the cd and copy the files to my hard drive?
Why can't I patch the program after the above not to decrypt?
I seem to remember that DeCSS came about cause of these "no one will ever get our keys" security.
What about older CD drives?
If widely deployed, less than six months.
Why do people think that it is possible to make bits uncopyable? Have we not been over this before? Has this changed since the last time we went over it? I am not even going to bother reading the article for this 'technology.' A design for digital copy protection is like a design for a perpetual motion machine - It may be interesting to look at, but you know from the start it is impossible to build.
Mayor Quimby: Now that prohibition is over, how long will it take you to flood with town with booze?
Homer: No thanks, I'm out of that business.
Fat Tony(leaning in): About 6 minutes.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
I think they're calling it 'root technology' because of the effect it's going to have on its consumers.
"Derp de derp."
Why not make CD copies have this instead of the original source discs?
For example, making backups of your software or music files. At least then you can guarantee copies of the original you own and prevent multi-generational copies of copies.
I would think both the software barons and the customer would find this win-win.
If one of these discs dont adhere to the ISO cd rom format like those audio CD's that dont adhere to the red book audio cd format, I wont risk my equipment on something that pretends to be what it isnt. I would feel much happier if CDs with this scheme came with a warning label similar to the ones on cigarette packs.
"Warning: This CD does is not a standard data cd and could disrupt your hardware. Caveat Emptor"
They plan to have special encryption keys hidden in software and which are pressed onto CD Roms and which can not be read with ordinary procedures.
:-)
So how long will it take to come up with "unordinary prodedures".
Except that the efforts of a few are easily transmitted to the masses.
The majority just has to find the work of the few good hackers.
In 2 years, do a Google search for "JVC CD crack" and see what Russian websites you end up on.
0x0D 0x0A
You keep setting these "proprietary" schemes up, and we'll keep knocking them down. Only after these companies have lost enough money will they learn the basic tenet that information will be free.
Silly rabbits..
it's there to annoy legit users
What prevents legit users from modifying the software on the disc so it doesn't check for the keys anymore?
I have a floppy with an old program that contained some kind of copy protection. Even when installed on the harddisk, the program could not run without the floppy in the drive. But when the floppydrive stopped working I had to do something. Actually I didn't modify the program, instead I just modified the floppydriver to return the values expected by the program.
I don't even think this is illegal. (If I thought so I wouldn't be talking loud about it on slashdot.)
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
I was going to say ethics, but then I forgot we've desperately been trying to replace those annoying things with technology that would just prevent us from being bad. It's the corperate software makers dream: If you can do it, it must be ok!
Of course, they dont seem comfortable sticking to this mantra when their software doesn't work as designed or is exploitable. Hows that for irony?
"Old man yells at systemd"
If I can read the contents of the disk, I can write it to another disk. If I can't read it (with my existing hardware and software) then it's broken.
Besides, how many warez d00ds are actively swapping copied CDs, anyway? Isn't it all ISO images in these days of broadband?
--
E_NOSIG
It is about time some one comes up with an unhackable security standard. I am tired of having to make back up copies of all my games and apps (esp VS. NET academic, 7 fucking cd's). Now with this technology deployed I can simply ask for a replacement disk when one of mine fail.
Wait, companies don't offer that protection even if my media fails? You mean I will have to pony up another 50-300 dollars for a piece of software?
Damn damn damn, I hope it gets cracked faster than IIS on a bad day.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I wonder if it is really worth all the trouble to get people not to pirate. Sure the industry comes up with numbers in the millions or billions, but the real question is would these people really buy a legite copy if they had to? Or would the reaction be similar to what is going on with the RIAA and "un-copyable" CD's? Has anyone actually proven that making a CD uncopyable will do anything good? Or will someone just figure out how and get put in jail (a la DVD and DeCSS).
DVDs have a similar copy-protection scheme. The CSS decryption keys are located on sectors of the DVD that are unwritable in the DVD-R (or +R, or RAM, etc.) media formats. So, if you copy a CSSed DVD, you get an encrypted copy with no accompanying keys.
So, a hacker group would have to gerry-rig a CD burner that could write to these "unwritable" areas of the CD-R, so that keys could be copied along with the encrypted software. Very difficult thing to do.
Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't been tried already.
Whenever I see these claims of "better, stronger, faster" anti-copying schemes, I wonder if these guys are noticing that the counter-anti-copiers develop new tactics faster than a bacterium can split in two.
What would this scenario look like if we translated it into WarCraft 3?:
"I AM THE MIGHTY THRALL! SEE THE INPENETRABLE WALL OF TURRETS THAT SURROUND MY BASE! I AM INVINCIBLE! NO-ONE WOULD DARE... HEY! STOP THAT! NOOOO!! PLEASE!! STOP!! ARRRRRGGGH!"
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
When will these people get it?! First, you can't copy protect something. It will be hacked with 48 hours of release, if not sooner. Second, all it takes is one person to put it on Kazaa and it's everywhere.
Meanwhile, millions of honest, law abiding people will have to deal with the bullshit problems that this will create. I use no-cd hacks for most of my games. With data storage going for close to $1 per gig, who the hell wants to insert a CD every time they want to play a game? Copy the whole CD to the hard drive and throw it in a box. Saves time and effort every time I fire up the latest version of (insert game here).
"All CD-ROM drives could read software with the encryption keys without any trouble," a JVC spokeswoman said.
Yeah, we'll see. Trust me, this time will be no different than the last eight times they've said this.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
This reminds me of the 3D Studio Max hardware dongle issue. To protect the software from piracy, the authors of 3DS Max had the program check for a dongle on the serial port of the computer. The dongle would return a unique key requested by the program, depending on the activity you were doing in the program at the time. The thought was with all the combinations that the dongle/software combo could possibly have, it would be impossible to emulate with software, thus keeping 3DS secure.
What happened?? 3DS was one of the fastest-cracked pieces of software I've ever seen. Instead of trying to emulate the dongle, crackers simply went through the program and removed all the calls to the dongle! 3DS was circulating around the internet in less than a week after it's official commercial release, paired with a fully-functional crack.
I expect this technology to be no different. People won't try to copy the original, they will figure out a way to get around the checking mechanism, then copy the cracked version. As the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way.
... I'm gonna start scanning my CD's. Eventually the DPI will be enough to make it work.
I wonder if this special technology is security by obscurity :)) If the magic can be read by the cd-rom drive, I really don't see what would be so hard in developing a "special technique" for recording the disc while playing back data from the original to create a new record without this silly copy-protection.
This is actualy a system to prevent users from BUYING CDs.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Ok, if anybody here knows more than what the article says -- presumably, the key will be accessible through direct-level calls to the CD-ROM to read specific tracks; what is to prevent the user from either intercepting these calls or monitoring usage of the CD-ROM, in order to determine where the keys are placed on the CD? I imagine an API implementation like WINE would be able to intercept these calls, with parameters, to find the specific locations.
But, I assume, this has been thought of by JVC. Why wouldn't it work?
...sniff the IDE channel and dump the data from it somewhere on a hard drive?
"special encryption keys which are hidden in software that's pressed onto a CD-ROM and cannot be read with ordinary procedures."
"The development team has already verified the compatibility of the Root encryption key system with about 200 models of CD-ROM drives on the market."
Unless those CD-ROM drives are using abnormal means to read those little 0's and 1's these statements are mutually exclusive. All one would have to do is a raw device dump and burn the resulting disk image on their favorite CD burner.
Burn Hollywood Burn
It certainly won't be profitable in the game biz. Show me a game that can't run without the CD and I'll show you a game no one wants to buy.
I have an 8x DVD drive that takes about 2 years to spin up, there's no way in luserland I'm going to wait for that delay anytime during game play, or application use for that matter.
Well, at work we make backup copies of our software then store the master copies in a safe place, that way we can send the copies out with our techs so if they get scratched and stuff it's no big deal.
Fair use is a nice thing, and it actually saves us money because we don't have to buy new copies when one gets scratched.
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
generally, depending on jurisdiction, it isn't illegal to do, it is illegal to provide the tools to others.
That used to be the standard way to skip past some copy protections under dos. First you run TSR, then you run the program/game.The TSR would capture the BIOS request to read the floppy and return the results without reading the disk.
It is relativly easy to modify a program for the same effect. I used to do it back in the days of DOS for games I bought. (seriously, it was a fun thing to do, and trying to read black ink on a red card was more painfull, never mind looking up word 5, page 45 paragraph 2....)
These young wippersnappers around here think you need sourcecode to modify programs...
They call it... The baseball bat.
They claim that the location, length and number of embedded keys can vary making it more difficult to hack.
"more difficult" != copy protection.
The copy protection arms race has continued unabated for what, 20+ years now?
No matter what they build, it will be circumvented. If a human can design it, another human can dismantle it.
It's sad, really, watching these companies dump millions of dollars into useless protection schemes while watching their profits and stock values shrink day by day.
Look -- it's not the pirates that are hurting your businesses. They have always existed and will continue to exist.
It's your stubborn unwillingness to admit that you cannot recoup every single penny from every single installation of your software throughout the world.
Optical disc for a master key, and a method and apparatus for optical-disc information management which inhibit and permit reproduction of main information from an illegal copy disc by using physical and logical security information
Inventors: Ozaki; Kazuhisa (Yokosuka, JP); Kayanuma; Kanji (Hadano, JP)
Assignee: Victor Company of Japan, Ltd. (Yokohama, JP)
Filed: September 12, 1995 Issued: September 15, 1998
nobody
parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus
"The Root encryption deserves to be called fourth-generation encryption. It is different from existing, so-called third-generation encryption, [in that] the encryption keys can not be located easily," said a spokesman for Hudson Soft.
Translation: "The encryption can't be beaten by current software. Consumers will have to upgrade to the next version of their CD-copying software to beat this."
Also, these are "special" keys. As we all know, "special" keys cannot be broken by anybody. Otherwise they wouldn't be "special".
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Yeah, these ideas are all great right up until the point that the key has to be loaded into memory to decrypt the content on the cd (into memory).
People will just use Softice to either get the key (since it will be an app key, not a unique one), or to just get the decrypted data. (and replace the decrypt routines with a load from raw file routine).
This is a classic example of people not understanding the trusted client problem, namely that you can't trust the PC as a client, ever!
There's no mystical energy field that controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
I'm not so sure. Using the analogy of the CSS decryption keys on a DVD, why not decrypt the keys and write out the unencrypted data back to another disc, then eliminate the security wrappers (whatever those may be) that are embedded in the formerly protected software?
Seems to me that it's no different than old protection methods on floppy discs, except that you've added another layer by decrypting most of the executable data with keys stored in the hidden "uncopyable" areas of the disc.
If someone wants that software bad enough to steal it, it will get stolen.
To me, it seems similar in concept to how one would steal a motorcycle. You can lock the handlebars, put an alarm on it, lock the wheels, etc. but there aren't any passive security mesaures that prevent 5-6 guys from just picking it straight up and into the back of a truck, where they can disarm it at their leasure.
Aaron
To assume that everyone that uses rar archives pirates a copy of winrar is almost as bad as assuming that everyone that backs up a cd is a "pirate".
http://www.unrarlib.org/license.html
There are alternatives for just about everything.
Same for zip.
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=531479
(n) Originally a term from Reconstruction time (1870) to mean southern men. Now it means white bigot, from whip-cracker or slavedriver.
"Got a little problem with the redneck cracker" -- Ice Cube (The Predator).
0x0D 0x0A
I'm afraid a Copy-protection Lab with 50 (maybe?!) employees can't compete against 200 million people with time on their hands.
Bzzzzt! Try again. Or, don't.
Me: So you've got this new CD that can't be copied, but I guess it sounds as good as a regular CD, right?
Them: Yes, thats right, just as good as a regular CD, but you can't read it without our special proprietary hardware/software that knows how to decrypt the special key and read the music. Its safe that way. And if they break it, we can change the key and update the players.
Me: So I can't use the equipment I know and love to listen to your music?
Them: Well, no, but our music...
Me: Hey look over there, music that doesn't make me jump through hoops. Bye.
Them: wait...
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
if it can be read, it can be burned... only by bit-bit, but it CAN be done.. rather easy to do actually....
I have a floppy with an old program that contained some kind of copy protection. Even when installed on the harddisk, the program could not run without the floppy in the drive.
This sounds very much a rehash of the same idea. Wonder if they will try to patent it, even with this obvious prior art...
But when the floppydrive stopped working I had to do something. Actually I didn't modify the program, instead I just modified the floppydriver to return the values expected by the program.
I don't even think this is illegal. (If I thought so I wouldn't be talking loud about it on slashdot.)
If this is isn't illegal expect the appropriate lobbying groups to be given revised orders.
NWN just dumped safedisk copy protection because it caused more support headaches then it was worth. I remember Diable 2 whenever they tweaked safedisk(or whatever copy protection it was) they ended up release usually path,patch.a,patch.b etc because there were always some large minority of people that got screwed by the safedisk changes. Basically most people are honest, and other copy protection mechanisms (cd key in the case of NWN) will get the majority of the rest. You will NEVER be able to stop the hardcore hacker (witness MS's Xbox key fun).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Of course that would be implicitly illegal under the DMCA... So I doubt that if it requires a special drive that someone would do that, however if anyone presumes that we will buy a special CD-Rom just to read their crap software they are in for quite a shock.... I doubt that any technology that used that method would catch on very well at all.
that helps when it breaks on Friday at 3:00 pm and the vendor wants $5.00 and 6-8 weeks to get a replacement copy to me. I make 'copy' of ALL CD material I get and store the originals in a nice dark safe place. Of course I've been accused of being anal....When the vendor will allow me to D/L the code using my broadband connect, since I am one of the 10% of the US citizens to have one then maybe this might fly. A VALID example is a LAN party trip..NEVER take your original CD's, some Luser will spill something on it or step on it.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
This is for software CDs, not audio CDs. ;)
Though I don't think JVC is too worried about you.
Sincerely,
teamhasnoi
If they tested this on CD-ROM drives already on the market, how would those know where to look for the keys in the first place ? Doesn't that imply that some sort of software needs to be installed to
a) tell my CD drive to look for encryption keys
b) tell my CD drive where to look for them
Huh ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
At some point the data gets unencrypted so it can be read... Wouldn't people just copy this information to disk rather than the encrypted information on the CD?
My friend is coming over with Mario Bros., Spare Change, Pinball Contruction Set, and Archon II. I'm going to trade him Appleworks, and Leather Goddess of Phobos for those.
Oh, wait. That was twenty years ago.
This really doesn't sound any different. As always, someone will use CloneCD to burn a perfect copy of the CD. Or they'll create an image of it, which I'll download and run on Daemontools.
The only possible way I could see them thwarting a raw copy is if the CD's they're pressing at the factory have extra areas that can be read by existing drives but aren't on (current) CD-R(W)s. I don't know if that's possible though. It wouldn't matter how good a burner you have; you can't burn it if there isn't a spot to burn the critical bits of data.
Of course, they'll still be able to read the original and create an image which can be run in Daemontools. That's how I run all my software anyways. Create an image from the original CD and I never have to go hunting for it again.
These will not play in a car stereo or a portable MP3 player, only in a computer and likely only in a Windows box. Not Mac or Linux since they have the SOFTWARE player located on the disc.
That completely eliminates most people's desire to buy a CD. Who wants to pay $21 for a CD which you can't take in your car or on vacation without lugging along a Windows laptop?
Given that I also use a Macintosh at home, yet another reason I won't buy this shit.
Of course the most overriding reason is I am simply sick of the RIAA and they havee lost my buisiness forever, even if they fell on their knees before me and wept and tried to get the DMCA revoked.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
You won't be able to talk about doing it under the forthcoming UK legislation...
You have the right to make a backup - if you can. They have no obligation to make it possible for you to.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I think what these copy protection people are forgetting, whilst spending these millions of dollars in research on anti piracy techniques is that at the end of the day, the data STILL NEEDS TO BE READ in order for it to be of any use to anybody.
This is the basic problem behind any of these DRM ideas. No matter if the data involved is sound, video or software.
Effectivly these people are spending money on something which fundermentally cannot work. They are probably throwing more money into this black hole than could ever be lost to "piracy". When the real answer to piracy is to price such the economies of mass producing CDs mean that it costs more to burn copies than to buy a regular copy. In the same way that people don't tend to photocopy books.
This is not Copy Protection, because it doesn't protect your "copy" at all, and in fact they're trying to mislead you into believing that making a copy is forbidden. There is nothing at all wrong with copying a music CD. Your purchase price INCLUDES the right to make a copy.
Please begin to call this by it's proper term.. Copy Prevention .
Companies like Sony, JVC, and others who are implementing these technologies want to take back the right you've paid for at the register, to make a legal copy of the music you've bought. These companies are taking your rights away, not giving you more rights.
If you want to retain the rights to the music you've already purchased, don't support companies who support or develop technologies like this. This includes going to see movies in the theaters that are sponsored by Sony Pictures and other companies who back or support these restrictive technologies. This is not a joke. Let them realize that their "decrease in revenue" is not because of piracy, but because people are getting annoyed with this stuff, and are boycotting the company's products (not to mention this economy thing these companies seem to ignore in their marketing reports on how piracy has quintupled in the past year).
Once people start using the right terms en-masse, awareness is sure to increase along with it.
Copy Prevention , not Copy Protection . Just remember that.
They spend thousands only to have it hacked in the first month by some 16 year old kid.
Or even they spend millions and it's cracked in week. Security is not a function of the amount of money spent. Especially with DRM which is the software equivalent of trying to make pi equal 3.
That has to be one of the funniest disses to h4x0r-speak I have ever seen. Take a bow, NG.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Wouldn't the key have to be burned into the CD anyway? So the program could read it in the first place. Doesn't this mean that bit-by-bit burners would copy it fine?
This is probably the more difficult way to do it. Probably easier to have such a program treated like one with a regular dongle and the cracked version written to a perfectly normal CD.
Then the cracked version is actually more valuable to regular users since they don't need to mess around inserting a CD.
Now it looks like the whole batlle is going to be repeated with CD's and DVD's. Guess who's going to lose that battle?
If they vary on different copies of the same CD, it's trivially easy to run diff and isolate them. If they're the same across all copies of the same CD, they're a bit harder to find, but someone finding them can distribute a patch for the disk image to disables them. There should be a map to where the keys are, and if that's hidden, its address needs to be kept somewhere. Do they plan to rewrite the codes that handles this for each CD, so that its fingerprint can't be simply found and the rest unravelled?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I've seen lots of posts that start with "sigh -- data is data and if i can read it, i can copy it".
These people assume that the busses will always be interceptable, which is not true. MS and other hardware vendores are hard at work at their secure OS which would effectively halt any attempts to read anything but encrypted bits. From what I've read, I feel the secure platform is a reality and will very easily stop cracking/hacking dead in it's tracks.
However, maybe when pirating is 100% eliminated, microsoft windows XP will cost $30 and not $300.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
" For every technology, there is equal and opposite Hacker technology. "
Eric's Theorem tells us that this is doomed to fail miserably, much as Safedisk, securom, etc, have failed.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Frankly, I'm surprised something like this hasn't been tried already.
JVC isn't the only company doing this.
I've got reliable sources that say that SONY is damned close on similar technology.
And the nice folks at Smarte Solutions have a whole suite of products coming online for just this sort of thing.
I'm not sure how easily this will be broken, truthfully. The software can be configured to all sorts of different levels, and the encryption can be linked to unique hardware identifiers and such. I'm no expert, but there are some that believe that this could be very tough.
If this is isn't illegal expect the appropriate lobbying groups to be given revised orders.
Most likely this is illegal now. DeCSS didn't involve modifying programs, but it still fell under the copy-protection circumvention bit of the DMCA.
Without even getting 1/3 of the way through the replies, I saw at least 4 posts whining that they wouldn't be able to play their new music CDs in the car or stereo. (Yeah like you buy them anyway)
I will quote the article:
A PC that looks for but cannot find the keys on an illegally-copied disk returns an error message. Root protection works for all CD-ROM disks read by a PC, but is not applicable to audio CDs.
Now, as far as being protection for software, this isn't going to stop the people doing most of the pirating. Most of the pirated games you download now are not copies of the CD but a compressed file containing the contents of the installation directory along with a hacked executable. With good audio and video compression and WinACE, as well as ripping out un-needed components, a 2-CD game can be crunched down to about 300-500 meg. You then run a simple script that comes with the distribution and it uncompresses everything in the directory you unzipped it in. Look for any popular game on Kazaa, that's the format you'll find it in, isos aren't nearly as common anymore.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
"It is NOT your choice what laws you are going to follow and which you are going to ignore."
I get your point, but that statement is wrong. Of course it is my choice to choose which laws to ignore, and it is the government's choice to put me in Pound-Me-In-The-Ass prison for doing so.
Maybe if they didn't inflate the price of software so much it wouldn't be pirated so often.
They could probably afford to reduce the price quite a bit if they didn't try to chase the impossible
If they really want to pirate it, they will.
Remember also that there is "piracy" from people simply to claim they have a copy of an expensive, "un-crackable", etc program.
>> It is NOT your choice what laws you are going
>> to follow and which you are going to ignore.
If it were up to you, we would still be selling each other into slavery.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
not if it is some piece of hardware in the disk.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
WinRar is $29 and WinZip is $29. Yet they are incredibly heavily pirated.
Most likely that simply demonstrates that $29 for a compression utility is excessive.
Therefore, that software being too expensive is crap. $29 isn't too much money.
It's a lot more than gzip or bzip. It's also a lot for something which costs virtually nothing to duplicate and distribute, with most of the actual costs being covered by the "customer".
Possibly quite a bit of the $29 actually goes to cover the cost of processing the payment.
Yes, the DMCA... :) Doesn't sound like an issue.
an American law in a world where the majority of the population isn't American.
To agree with other parts of the thread:
I hate on-disk copy protection as well. I don't mind CD keys at all though. At least you can easily back those up along with your cd.
- I pay for your flight to my city.
- You come equipped with lots of cash, which you show me before we begin for verification.
- I show you to a workstation equipped with VB6 as well as VB.NET for your convenience. You are not allowed to use any materials you brought with you - this is a "from scratch" project.
- You sit down and I then start the timer.
- If in 5 minutes you have produced a close approximation of WinZip, including create/update capabilities for all archive types that it supports, Explorer right-click menu integration for easy extraction, ability to span disks, UUEncode support, and ability to view files and zip comments, I will give you $2000. If you've failed, you give me $4000.
- Since I know you will fail, I will make it more interesting. Depending on your confidence level at the end of 5 minutes, I will let you extend the timer to 10 minutes. If you win, you get $4000, but fail again, and owe me $8000.
- With some begging, I may extend the contest to 11 minutes, but you'd need to agree to tattoo "I will not badmouth quality shareware" somewhere on your body in an at least 12pt font.
Let me know your thoughts please.Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
s/years/months/
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm glad you honor the memory of people who have known what true suffering is by equating your potential loss of ability to pirate photoshop to a true travesty against man. If it were up to me, I'd find everyone on this planet that has suffered due to slavery in some form of another, and then I'd find the biggest and meanest out of that group, and let them know that some little pissant thinks he knows true suffering because he actually had to buy his software and music. I'll let them know that you think you know what it's like to actually suffer.
And the most fucked up part, is you actually believe that because someone out there might not want you to pirate some game they wrote, or some music cd they recorded, that you know the slings and arrows of a miserable, hellish existence.
I don't know whether to wish true suffering on you, or envy you. If your life has been that small and uneventful that you can honestly believe what you do, then I must choose to envy you, because you have never known suffering on any realistic or recognizeable levels.
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
Actually that's what the black ink on a red card was referring to. text was imprinted on a manual and then covered over with other text such that when viewed through a red filter you could read the underlining text. of course if you tried to photocopy the page all you would get is a black block that could not be read.
CDs are durable, and I doubt whether the software will still be in use in 5 years, certainly not in 10 years, and the CD will last at least 15, so no problem there.
Spoken like someone with absolutely no experience of flatmates, coworkers, animals, or children.
Sure, for a company that copies the install to their server and then stores the CD in a safe, a backup is not needed... but for regular home users who don't have secure storage facilities, realities inevitably intrude.
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
... but as I heard it, the dongle caused lots of problems itself. The usual advice for fixing it was to go find a cracked copy and run that instead of your legit copy, because at least that way it wouldn't interfere with the rest of the system.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Using this stuff will just anger legitimate users to the point that we will switch to an open source clone of whatever proprietary software uses this crap. JVC and Hudson soft will make a quick buck selling this to software companies that don't get it, and those software companies will go out of business as their former customers, offended by the presumption that they are thieves, take their business elsewhere.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
You might not feel the same if you actually MADE anything and tried to make a living by SELLING it only to realize that 95% of the people using your product STOLE it. This sort of thing helps and protects smaller companies and individual producers a lot more that large corperations. They can take a large hit and reamin in buisness. The small 20 person teams (Of which I belong to 2) can't.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
So the technology works only on data CDs not Audio.. So the recording industry would have to release Mp3 files or Ogg files if they want to protect them. Ya gotta love it...
I won't buy copy protected software for anything more critical than a game. I've been burnt too often. I suppose that music counts as "not more critical than a game", but with the RIAA corrupting the legislatures, I don't buy that, either.
That said, even for games a piece of copy protected software has a lot less value for me than one that isn't copy protected, so I am much less willing to pay a high price. And I consider $50 to be a high price for a game. If games were important to me, then I'd be working on GPL game building toolkits. Perhaps CrystalSpaces qualifies here.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think it will go the other way: without the threat of people being able to get Windows for free, the price will go UP, because without warez it's either pay for it or do without. But so long as it's possible to warez a software title, major retail publishers have to consider the price point at which the average consumer will buy, vs. a point beyond which they see the item's pricing as a ripoff and would rather steal it.
And this growing presumption that the consumer is the ENEMY is self-defeating. Look what happened with the price of WinXP (with its activation sca^Hheme) -- it retails for roughly double the price of previous versions. And an awful lot of people who'd bought legit copies of all versions before XP, said "if that's the way they're going to treat us, I'll just warez the damned thing and serves 'em right."
If software publishers want this to become the prevailing attitude, hey, go ahead, protect away!
Not to mention that the risk of breakage in some situations (LAN parties, technicians' use such as someone mentioned above, etc.) and the unwillingness of some publishers to provide replacement media, are now incentives to break the protection if only so you can make a legit backup.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
"making it more difficult to hack."
Which is it? Does it prevent it, or merely (like everything else) make it more difficult... meaning its eventually inneffective?
What prevents legit users from modifying the software on the disc so it doesn't check for the keys anymore?
Like NiceGeek said, it doesn't stop, it annoys.
I have a floppy with an old program that contained some kind of copy protection. Even when installed on the harddisk, the program could not run without the floppy in the drive. But when the floppydrive stopped working I had to do something. Actually I didn't modify the program, instead I just modified the floppydriver to return the values expected by the program.
And didn't it annoy you that that was necessary?
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
What a retard- I guess if I don't spell out the EXACT correlation between what I have to say and the reason this will get cracked this moron doesn't pick up on it.
What an idiot.
Are all the 'this will get cracked' posts off topic?
Let me rephrase this in a way you may be able to understand- whoever you are you loser moderator idiot.
People can do anything given enough time.
Cracker people have lots of time.
They will crack this like ancient civilizations 'cracked' astronomy.
Does that seem more on topic to your sorry pea sized brain?
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
if there's a spyware app in this technology that automatically installs a trialware version of Adventure Island...
Noting but time. The software developer can make it hard to figure our how to modify the software.
For example, back in the late 80's, Deluxe Music Contruction Set for the Mac was a pain to crack, because most of the code was encrypted, so disassemblers, even great ones like MacNosy, were not too useful. The decryption key was derived from a checksum of the code that loaded and decrypted the encrypted code segments, and since the 68k did not have hardware breakpoints, setting a breakpoint in a debugger involved writing a breakpoint instruction into memory, which changed the checksum, which borked the decryption.
The loader/decrypter also took steps to kill any debuggers that were running, so that you could not just hit the interrupt button after the program was decrypted and dump memory.
They didn't quite cover everything....there was a place you could put a breakpoint that was outside the range of memory that was checksummed, but was executed after the key had been derived, so crackers got in...but it was clear that with a bit more effort, they could have delayed cracking for a lot longer.
Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort.
P.S. If I said "NOP NOP NOP"
EA EA EA
Help! I'm in peek/poke flashback hell! Someone CALL -151!!!
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Better keep the CD's in the computer or in a secure case at LAN parties. It's a bad idea leaving CD's out in the open anywhere.
Server side.
Why did everyone pay for quake3 instead of copying it? ID did not put anti-copy measures on the CD. They just had a CD key which used an encryption mechanism that was contained on the server.
Would I make a copy of quake3 for a friend? Hell no I wouldn't! If I did, I sure wouldn't give them my CD key, because then I couldn't play.
The only way around this mechanism of copy protection is to hack the server that the decryptor is on. Good luck.
Of course, if you employ this method of copy protection, you have to require your customers to be hooked up to the net.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
There still is a point to copy-protection. Software companies know that there are 2 kinds of piracy- people who download the cracked version without going anywhere near an original disk, and people who say "That's cool, can I borrow it for the weekend ?" and then burn off a copy.
Copy-protection stops the latter case. They will never stop the former.
graspee
encryption can be linked to unique hardware identifiers and such. I'm no expert, but there are some that believe that this could be very tough.
That's not very likely, since we're not talking smart cards like one of the more recent stories, the "unique hardware" approach would not be feasible in the least.
>EA EA EA
... EA ... oh the IRONY! THE IRONY!!
Yeah, and don'tcha get the joke? Electronic Arts
All kidding aside, hey whaddaya know -- I posted the parent at +1 bonus, and it's since been modded down one with no explanation. I guess CmdrTaco et al really do get hot and bothered about that DMCA stuff.
Breakfast served all day!
Why do people think that it is possible to make bits uncopyable?
Last I checked, it's STILL impossible for most people (if not all) to copy Playstation games 100%, due to bad/corrupt/whatever data burnt to the CD, which home cd burners can't deal with. Yes, modchipping gets around this little problem, but the fact remains: for all intents and purposes, someone HAS created uncopyable bits - at least as far as consumers are concerned.
Now, as far as doing something like this with bits that a CD-ROM drive can actually read and do something meaningful with... that's a whole nother ball of wax.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I pay for your flight to my city.
:)
You come equipped with lots of cash, which you show me before we begin for verification.
I show you to a workstation equipped with VB6 as well as VB.NET for your convenience. You are not allowed to use any materials you brought with you - this is a "from scratch" project.
Step 3 is where this will all start to breakdown, since at this point i will be off to enjoy my air-fare free vacation and you will not be likely to see me again... but hey it sounds fun, what city is this fine excursion to anyways?
Seems all the posts here talk about the need to get around copy protection. Bottom line is that I won't use software that is protected
in any manor. I refuse to jump through hoops or have artificial limitations placed on my ability to use software, or make backups of software. Any company that attempts to restrict my ability to make legit backups or transfer a "license" to an alternate machine will find me going to their competitors.
Of course opensource has none of these problems.
I USED to use Windows along side Linux on a regular basis, but it was clear with XP that MS was tightening the screws. Now I only rarely use Windows at all, and only when I need to run software that has no linux counterpart. I've purchased my last MS product with Win2K. I will never upgrade. Instead, I will move to Linux for 100% of my work. The EULA's just make life with MS untenable.
Listen to the guys that replied. Heck I learned something from them today. All this time I thought I was being called a saltine.
"Derp de derp."
Here's my idea for fool-proof copy protection.
Every software license comes with a Mafia thug to watch over it. If you copy, you pay or he shoots.
Seems pretty simple, no? No need for confusing EULA's.
Oh, wait. They do.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
$wget ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/src/unzip542.t
$cd unzip
$make
$su -c "make install"
Point is that if you had to be nickled and dimed for every POS program on your computer, we'd still be reimplementing bubble sort.
Mr. Lincoln said it better:
The laws (being used against the people) are unfair. I want to rip my Matrix Revisited DVD to my computer so that I can test 'greenscreen compositing' using footage the DVD contains. This is for educational purposes as it directly pertains to my job as an animator. The laws that used to allow me to do this have changed. All this because the *AA is unwilling to change their business plans for fear that they'd only make a fair profit instead of an extortionary profit.
I can't speak for XP, but I don't think Win2k has any real anti-copying schemes in use. I've made backups before without any challenges. Either that or my CD burner's more robust than I thought heh.
Remember that the software developer doesn't have to make their program uncrackable. They just have to make it so time consuming as to not be worth the effort
Um, no. The more challenging it is, the more people will target it. The really good cracker groups get tired of generating keygens and hacking winzip for the 10,000th time, so they really savor the opportunity to go after challenging targets.
Like playing a game of chess with a good opponent that you have to work on, as opposed to a weak opponent that's boring to play...
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
Dude, I think he was jst using an extreme case to illustrate a point, that point being "we DO have the right to choose which laws we obey". The moral difference between reverse engineering copy protection and opposing slavery isn't relevant to the point; whether or not we have the moral obligation to oppose bad law is.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
CDs containing commercial software have a key written in a special area of the disc, which is designated "read-only." Through legislation or industry standards, it is enforced that no CD-RW available to consumers can be permitted to write to that area of a disc, but they can all read it just fine.
Ignoring the problem of legacy hardware and legal issues (who gets the privilege of owning a CD-writer that can write to the special area?), how would this scheme be cracked?
My deviantArt site
Ghandi & King weere advocates of civil disobedance, that is of publicaly violating a law as a protest against it's unfairness. They were not scoffalaws that refused to obey laws because they saw a financal advantage in ignoring them. (Something I can't say about many of the posters to this forum)
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
Remember when you had to use Copy ][ plus to copy 5 1/4" floppies on an Apple ][?
Remember when you brought copyrighted software that had purposeful holes punched into a diskette? Those holes emulated bad sectors and if you copied that data of the disk to another disk the sectors when be reordered. The new disk didn't have any bad sectors so it just tried to save space and compact the sectors. The pirated software would read the reordered sectors and go into a nasty recursive loop.
It took about 1-2 months for hackers on BBS's and FidoNet to find ways to create programs that locked out corisponding sectors and created new security sectors on the floppies.
How long do you think it will take for the internet community to find a similar loop hole on CD's?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
Everyone forgets. If it plays on your computer, it can be recorded by your computer. Hell, stick a double-female connector from audio-out to line-in. Problem solved. The end-all hack. Sure. You're copying it in 1x time. But there was a point when that was the best we could do. At least we can encode it in real time too.
Nice try, JVC.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
But the average mentality of the average slashdot reader is based more on justifying petty theft to themself than it is the honest drive to protect the digital rights of the consumers of the world.
What is theft to you is freedom to others.
Protect the digital rights of consumers?
You mean protect the ability of greedy a-holes to infringe on our liberties? If you can't put chains on it or put a fence around it, it does not belong to you. Makes no difference if it's ideas, inventions, music, writings, speech or what have you. Once you've released it, like the air, it belongs to nobody and everybody.
What if some alien jackasses from Andromeda showed up on planet Earth and insisted that everything we own belongs to them because they invented it first? We'd kick their silly-looking arses back into deep space.
Don't these ignorant bastards realize that there are legitimate reasons to make backup copies of CDs, or make ISOs of them on your hard drive? I call this reason the "shit! a scratch on the CD causes the game to crash right before the last boss!" factor.
It's been a long time.
I read the article about the copy protection scheme and was not even lightly amused.
This is going to be so easy to crack that it is not funny. The article said that each TITLE may be given different keys and what not, this will have to mean that every CD of a given software title is identical.
Now, here is how to handle this:
1. Get a CD of the title.
2. Analyze what the program asks for from the CD.
3. Write a filter that intercepts the requests from the program and returns the correct data. The original program does not have to be modified.
Copy protection schemas are not going to prevent copying. My company produces a very expensive system that can be downloaded for free off the Internet. We know people copy it, but none of the people who copy it could afford to buy it nor would they fork out that much money for the program. But, it is better that you donwload it and get used to it, then you'll ask for it when you are done with school and starts to work. More revenue to us, payraise to me. Ergo, it is good for everyone! When are other companies going to realize this?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Wager time. I'm betting...
One week before researchers have produced code that can completely compromise all of the copy protection.
One point five weeks before the elite technical community can get over the annoyances.
Two weeks before software pirates can make copies without skipping a beat.
Eight months of legitimate users being annoyed before the tech is pulled.
Sprinkle random DMCA arrests and intimidation.
what I choose to use and what work requires are 2 things. I guess I am just a fat lazy bastard, because I want my cake and I want to eat it too. Why should I have to lose out to do the right thing. In the end I guess I just bitch alot and make small steps :( Damn..I am gonna go have a Guinness....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Took em a little while to realize that without a little bit of data stored on the dongle, your models would eventually disintegrate into a pile of spiky crap.
:)
Of course, the crackers got past that too
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
SafeDisc comes to mind as an example. Safedisc works by encrypting crucial pieces of the application (usually the main executable) and using a decryption key stored in munged sectors on the disk to get at it.
Been cracked many times in many versions, I'm afraid.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Well, at least in Switzerland they can't legally prevent you from copying software. I'd be amazed if other countries didn't have a similar law.
Rough tanslation of Swiss copyright law, article 24/2:
"Whoever has the right to use a computer program may make backup copies thereof. This privilege cannot be revoked by contract."
Awesome, huh? So we can just blast through any copy prevention legally, I guess.
...and return 'true' or whatever value the check function should return. No matter how smart the protection is, the weak spot is where the code which checks if the copyprotection is in place is called and where the result of that code is examined. The copy protection code is then useless, and the game can be copied freely.
This is known for years, and still companies tend to invent smart copy protection schemes without addressing this weak spot.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
What they are doing is hiding encryption information in the subcode channels of the CD-ROM.
Nearly all drives can happily read subchannels off CD-ROMs but very few CD-R/RW drives can actually write this extended information, as it isn't part of the user data stream.
This subchannel information is used for things like index marks within a track for audio, embedding CD+G graphics (low res, 4096 colour graphics) positioning information and ECC/EDC.
All they are doing is embedding extra information within these channels where writing it back to a CD-R, your burner simply isn't capable of reproducing it.
-- k
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
you edit the source of the operating system and remove all the calls to the key-checking.
Bingo.
"Oh please that is the lamest excuse for ripping I have ever heard. Let me get this right you want to use someone elses hard work to make you look good at work."
Do you really believe that, or are you just trolling? If you reply to this, I'll give you a rebuttal. I warn you, though, defeat is imminent.
For example, making backups of your software or music files. At least then you can guarantee copies of the original you own and prevent multi-generational copies of copies.
That is still a bad idea. If and when your master disk gets scratched, damaged, or lost you won't be able to make a backup of the only existing copy you've made.
The correct use of this technology is serializing each copy of the software, so that the program / song can be associated with a real, living person, or at least their credit card number. This doesn't necessarilly require watermarking, nor does it mean a determined copyright violator can't do the digital equivelent of 'filing off the serial numbers', but filing off the serial numbers is more difficult to justify than making backup copies or moving the copies to different media, and a law disallowing the removal of serial numbers is a hell of a lot more palitable than a law disallowing the circumvention of copy prevention technology in order to back up the software you paid good money for.
Serializing software did more to stop widespread software copying than any of the attempted, and since discarded, copy prevention schemes ever did.
Yes, you still have warez dudes (and you will always have such, no matter what you do), but the willingness of every Tom, Dick, and Harry to share their software illegally went out the window the first time they saw their name associated with a product serial number, and hasn't been back since.
As others have noted, we've been down this path before, and it remains a technological sink hole and dead end. It will never be effective, it will never work regardless of how draconian the laws or how pervasive the spyware and enforcementware becomes.
What is particularly silly is that a solution has already been found and used, and found to be effective, and these idiots still can't grasp it.
Perhaps after they've spent another billion on these snake-oil salesmen they'll start to 'get it', but somehow, based on past idiocy, I'm not holding my breath.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Not for the average person. And the casual copier is all they need to stop, really. Well, and the crack makers.
Which are generally cheaper?
The industry is a bunch of thieves.
Keep in mind the PC is much harder to design for and test than a console. If you're designing a game for the PS2, you only have one set of hardware to worry about. If you're designing for the PC, the hardware is varied.