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New SecuROM Ties Protection to Physical Structure
bernardos70 writes "I read a brief article describing how the new version of secuROM, which is already present in newer games, employs a new encryption method which 'tie[s] itself specifically to the physical structure and characteristics of each disk'. Apparently companies are even ordering specially designed media to implement this method. I think that all this will do is frustrate the average joe trying to make legit copies, as the various groups online distributing ISO's are sure to find a way to bypass yet this new technology."
my and my dollars will go some place else. end of story.
I don't understand this. How can the encryption be tied to the physical structure of the disk, be able to play in any cd rom drive, yet be uncopyable.
I understand that perhaps you could say well, sector X is going to be unreadable, and if it is readable, then it isn't a legit copy, but I don't see any other way that this is possible, yet still able to run in CD drives. (Of course, I don't specialize in hardware of this sort.)
Most warez comes with cracks for SecuROM or whatever else already distributed with ISO, and whenever there's a patch, the patches are quickly cracked and distributed everywhere.
Even CD-Keys don't make much of a difference for not paying for the game -- servers are being cracked and emulated like crazy in everything from War3 to Battlefield to UT2k3 (just use buddy-lists).
There are a lot of people out there in the "scene" who are absolute Gods in disassembly and cracking, and nothing on Earth can stop them -- these people get the game and crack advanced protections on the way home on a laptop in a car.
I have no idea how sturdy 3DGPU's server is either, so this may serve a double purpose in case it goes down:
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Latest SecuROM Foils Even The Best CD Copiers
Posted by Paul Sullivan on October 10th, 2002 - Thursday 11:32 am
I have been getting a good stream of emails regarding the trouble copying the latest games with SecuROM protection and have been working to determine what is up, and after some hardcore telephone dialing, begging and pleading, have uncovered some information you all should know about. More than two individuals at two different companies (who unfortunately don't want to go on the public record for fear of reprisals) have confirmed to me that the latest SecuROM protection was designed specifically to thwart even the best current methods of copying.
From what I have been told, the new configuration uses a special glass master and pressing media with certain unique characteristics that allows the SecuROM protection to tie itself specifically to the physical structure and characteristics of each disk so that copies are very difficult if not impossible for the average consumer to make. I was further told that since copy protection companies were not able to get many CD drive manufacturers to comply with requests to build protection detection into their firmware and other aspects of the drives, the copy protection companies opted to go with one thing they can control - the physical media itself. The media is apparently special ordered and not designed to be made available to the public. Kind of like how you are issued keys to your post-office box that are not supposed to be copied by retail shops or how some new keys include custom microchips that cannot be duplicated by key fabs for public use.
If copying is to be able to be done, the thought is that true 1:1 copies will not be possible, since the protection is tied to each specific disk it is implemented on. If a fix is to be made, it will have to be on the software end, it appears. Don't hold your breath, however, as developing software that is specifically designed to thwart such protection is now subject to the DMCA, at least for now. Of course, we all know how that can turn out. We will need to wait and see if CloneCD, BlindWrite, CD-Mate or others can find a way to strip the protection from the original while duping, or perhaps find a way to alter the copy protection as it is transferred so that it recognizes the characteristics of the blank CD in use.
I was also told that No-CD hacks are not something these folks care much about. A couple of folks told me that No-CD hacks are pretty benign and if it keeps a loyal customer happy, they are ok with it. It is the copy and dissemination of the originals that seems to be what they are worried about. More as it becomes available. Any info you can share would be welcome here in the comments area.
Karma: \Kar"ma\, n. [Skr.] (Buddhism) One's acts considered as fixing one's lot in the future existence.
Personally, I make copies of my games (legally owned) for use on my laptop. Who wants to chance losing/damaging their only CD while travelling?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
I have no wish to pirate, but I also have no wish to buy hardware that will cause more trouble than the old hardware.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Most of the games that are pirated are available from warez sources a couple of weeks prior to the games going on store shelves. I would bet the trend will continue. So in some ways I would agree with you, move the warez release out and more people will buy. I would say not 30-60 days, but maybe even a week would have an impact.
There have been instances when I have played a game, enjoyed a game, and been bored with a game, prior to it ever being released to stores...no excuses here, just stating a fact.
--man those were the days..-
that was even before the C64 came out..Anyone remember the commodore PET ?
perl -e 'printf("%x!\n",49153)'
Yes, there are people out there who make legit copies of software for backup reasons, especially if you need the CD in order to play the game. If you play the game a lot, just the motion of taking the CD in and out of the tray can scratch it up to the point where it is unusable. I have quite a few games that I can't play anymore because the CD is scratched beyond recovery. Why do you think EB makes a fortune selling devices to clean CD's and DVD's? Every time I go in to that store, I get hounded to buy one.
It turned out to be futile. People just disabled whatever code depended on it. And if the locations of the holes were used as a cryptographic key, people would just recover the key and hack the executable to supply it.
On current operating systems, where applications can't talk directly to the hardware anyway, you can do something even simpler: you just emulate whatever that special track contains by recording it on the source disk and replaying it through the driver on the destination drive. And if the drivers ever were to become secure, a small FPGA inserted into the ATA cable between the CD-ROM and the controller would give you the same capability completely transparently.
But the biggest problem with these approaches turned out to be that consumers just didn't like them and preferred software that didn't have such annoying mechanisms built in.
Overall, copy protection is a losing battle. The cost software vendors suffer in usability and customer good will is apparently higher than the losses from piracy that they stop.
Securom has nothing to do with the physical media. Look it up on google if you want.
Does your writer: 1. read and write RAW DAO and sub-channel data?
Does your burning software of choice: 1. write in RAW mode 2. with sub-channel data?
End of story.
This doesn't even need to be cracked... It's below cracking...
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
I didn't use to, until my Safedisc protected Diablo II Play Disc started giving me read errors, with less than an year of use.
Funny fact: My four-year-old, unprotected Starcraft CD still works, even thought it's scratched beyond recognition. I guess those stories about protected CDs being more fragile may be true after all. Which is kinda funny, since that would mean the protected CDs were the reason I started making copies.
[]s Badaro
My sig became obsolete, and I lack the imagination to create a new one.
With todays harddisks of 100gb+, why not keep copies of the cds on the harddisk? Less noise (48x reader has a distinct annoying pitch), no searching for the cd, no changing cd, and the cd-rom is free when I need it, no need to go looking for that cover to put the old cd in. Plus it keeps my originals in mint condition.
I don't *care* if they want to use my cd-rom as the modern-day dongle. It's a hassle, and I don't want it. It won't be the end of the world if I can't do that in the future, but don't pretend it's not useful and convienient.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The oldest and easiest way to circumvent copy protection schemes is to use a JMP opcode. A debugger, and about 5 minutes of examination is all it takes. What in god's name are these people thinking? Copy protection has never worked, and it never will.
Actually, I think I kind of understand where this is coming from. I worked at a company that tried to be at the cutting edge of e-books (they fell off the edge, but whatever). I was a project manager and lead architect (sure blame me). I was constantly hounded by the biz and marketing side for more security and encryption on the books. I repeatedly told them how if a user can read it someone will figure out a way to copy it.
One day I was taken in to our VP's office and told that he understood that someone would always figure out a way to copy the ebook, but could I come up with a way to keep our clients from being able to copy their own books. See if I could come up with a clever scheme that thwarted dumb publisher and his "tech-wizard" friend/brother/brother-in-law (who ever they may be) then they will at least think their books are secure. So I did, the clients ooh'ed and ahh'ed, and life was good.
I am guessing that these new copy protection schemes have nothing to do with the actual populace that will use the games and more to do with marketing and biz talk.....bleck.
SecuROM is already out, one such game is Hitman 2. Being an unlucky sould who bought the game I was greeted with a ncie suprise. Buggy as HECK, crashes constantly, can't even make it past certainllevels. It IS hacked already thogh as there is a cracked .EXE on certain sites already. So "might make it harder" is moot, this "new" version is already DoA.
What's even MORE interesting is that the only way MANY of us have been able to get the game to work is to used the cracked .exe....turns out SecuROM is screwing up the game....
What fun! Certainly kept hackers at bay!
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
Copy protections such as this, do nothing more then piss the average user off.. A year or so back, an RTS called Emperor: Battle for Dune came out, and when I finally BOUGHT the game, I brought it home, only to find that the setup program wouldn't load, giving me some error about the cd being a copy. After screwing around with it for an hour or so, I called the game's tech support line.. (Which was long distance, naturally..) After waiting on hold for a good 20 minutes, they told me they were aware of my problem, and that it was caused by thier copy protection (SafeDisc 2), and told me that I would need to buy a new CD drive to play the game. Needless to say, I was pissed. I told 'em I'd be returning the game to the store, and downloading a copy of it off the internet, and hung up on 'em.
When are they going to learn, that they won't be able to stop the hardcore warez groups from releasing thier games a week before they show up in stores? I believe they should include basic protection, such as SafeDisc 1, and leave it at that. That'll stop Joe Newbie from coping the game, and giving it to all his friends, while at the same time, not screwing a small part of thier legitimate buyers..
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
The thirty something group might remember that physical media protection failed once before. In the 80's many software companies "invested" heavily on physical media protection (spiral tracking anyone?) and ultimately the only thing they achieved was pissing off customers that just want to install software onto harddisk. By early 90's on-media protection had all but disappeared.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
For those of you older folks, you may remember when Lotus123 came out with the first copy proof protection scheme in 1983? They burned a little hole in the disk with a laser beam. Let's see, that took about two days before it was cracked.
Not So. I bought Baldur's Gate when it was released. It came on 5 CDs. Disk 2 went bad on me on day 2 of playing the game. It took me an entire day of failed attempts before my burner succeeded in reading an image of the bad disk so I could burn a copy. I then copied all the other disks in case they went bad.
Since that day the FIRST thing I do when I get a game home is make copies of the CDs. I then install and play from the copies while keeping my originals in a safe place.
Unreal Tournament 2003 currently suffers because of the use of their "copy protection"
The games are not tested after the copy protection is added so while the developer think everything is golden, the publishers throw on a protection scheme and ship broken games until someone comes up with a fix.
As a former game programmer myself, I can tell you that absolutely NOTHING is more disheartening than getting near the end of a game cycle, looking forward to getting the game out, and then finding on a newsgroup people already talking about the pirated copies they've downloaded.
Especially when this happens after the second year running that a publisher nukes your revenue stream on a game, claiming 'sorry, piracy losses...we're sure you'll recoup with the next game, now that you're in debt to us and have to stay with us.'
--Rachel
A an avid gamer and the OWNER of a huge number of lame CD's that have more bugs than Africa does, I've rationalized it to myself. When software publishers take responsibility to ensure that the code they release RUNS at a bare minimum then I will start to assume some responsibility, until then I am a full scale game pirate these days.
NWN is a prime example...BIOWARE did not fix the errors...the MOD community did. BIOWARE is not supporting the bloody game, it was released BETA and is community supported. Take a lesson from the Indy Music folks, drop the publisher, put out a quality game and let it advertise itself, word of mouth on the net is MUCH better than paid advertisments anyways.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Heavily protected games get cracked faster. Something about the thrill of the challenge, I guess. Or maybe its because if you crack it first (as a warez group) and it was difficult, you get bragging rights.
:-)
For verification, ask anyone with a C64. Don't forget to ask how many -ve day releases they had, depite cool anti-piracy "features" like 1/2 tracks, laser burned discs (I'm waiting for this on CD-ROM!), and 1541 misalignments.
I stay away from all that stuff, though. I've seen/heard of what happens to people "in the scene" that I prefer to just sit idly by and observe.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Unfortunately this has an effect on the bubble by reducing the number of people who initially buy. Hard core gamers willing to part with the cash may not buy based on what they hear around the net about copy protection. Additionally if companies had a software return policy that encouraged not discouraged consumers from returning poorly made product or just something they aren't interested in, they might see their sales increase significantly. As it is right now I'm leary of buying any game until I know at least one person who has it and know's that it works well (isn't laden with bugs) and that it will hold interest for more than a day. Too many times I've gotten burned by $50 games that were either flakey or just trash. In the end the only policy is to return to the manufacturer which people just don't use. People need to be able to make legitimate backups and also need the right to return garbage in a timely manner. Current policies don't facilitate and can significantly hamper these needs.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
So I don't see any worries about Blizzard losing revenue from casual copying...
CD-Key's mean you have to buy the game to play online. Side note: that's not quite true. A friend at work ran into someone else online using his CD-Key. He hadn't even taken his copy of the game home (our boss bought each of the engineers a copy of the game when it came out). Someone must have used a key-generator and tried several times until he manage to randomly get my friend's key. Blizzard of course didn't help at all. Finally, he returned it to Best Buy to exchange for another copy. Interesting how the legit customer gets screwed in all these schemes.
I used to copy a lot of games a few years ago as a student. I probably could have afforded to buy one or two, but I had essentials like beer to buy. I copied, I traded, I had great big caselogic wallets filled with hundreds of disks I'd never even loaded up. I had hacks, cracks, keygens, emulators, a chips on my Playstation - there was absolutely no piece of protection on any software that prevented me from running it.
One day I opened a jiffy bag that popped through my door and out slid a shiny GoldCD with Halflife written on it in thick black marker. I'd read about this, it was supposed to be good, definitely worth loading up. In the drive it went and as normal I fired up the keygen as it installed. Bingo, 10 minutes later I was on my monorail to work. God it was a good game, I actually started getting twinges of guilt for ripping it off, but seemed a little bit stupid to buy an identical copy in a pretty box. Next step was to rope in my housemate - but he wasn't too hot and the novelty of popping crossbow bolts between his eyes wore off. Next stop - online. Refreshed the server list, chose my games and *Scream* - it said I didn't have a valid id. Bastards! I hunted for new keygens, hacked servers - but no luck.
I relented and bought the game for a serial number.
99% of the games I had copies of I would never have paid for. 1% I would have, but I already had working copies so why go and buy a box I would never have to open. I wasn't going to start buying games before trying them as I was well aware the chances are I wouldn't love it.
Maybe the future of gaming is shareware? Flood the net with easily available copies of your game, let people try it. If they like it ask them for a medium sized payment to activate it fully - open the second half of it, allow connection to servers with over a certain number of players, allow you to have full range of vehicles in your RTS.
Basically people like to try things before they buy them, hear a couple of singles on the radio or on MP3 before they buy the album. Currently the best demos people can get are full warez releases - and once they have that demo they'll never buy the game.
My final suggestion would be a personised activation ID for all games. I apply for it free online, and then I pay to register it against certain games. People could look at my homepage and see what I played, how good I was, click to chat to me. If I'm away on work and want to play a game I've bought I log in to my account and download a copy of the code I'm entitled to and I'm away. Maybe we could even have trialware - $5 to play the game for a week refundable against it if I choose to activate it for life. Underground/Indy releases could have budget/free activation for the first 1000, allowing a community that would attract others to be built....sorry I'm rambling here - but I'm sure there's a good idea or two in there somewhere.
Diablo II used an earlier version of SecuROM and wouldn't play on my DVD-ROM (Creative 5x) because the drive won't read subcodes in data mode. I actually had to download an unprotected copy of the game exe to get it to run, WITH THE ORIGINAL DISC!
I had to find the no-CD crack the day NWN came out (I paid for it. TWO copies so that I'd have a spare for a guest). It wouldn't work on my hardware otherwise.
Supports suggested solution? "Buy another CD drive and keep buying 'em until you find one that works. Oh and take the CD burner off your machine. It pisses off the copy protection".
The CD drive was my "working set" backup device at the time. Uh no, not going to stop backing up the recently changed files to make the fucking copy protection happy.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump