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Software Deletes Files to Defend Against Piracy
teamhasnoi writes "Back in 2004, we discussed a program that deleted your home directory on entry of a pirated serial number. Now, a new developer is using the same method to protect his software, aptly named Display Eater. In the developers's own words, 'There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don't know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.'"
Considering that in our legal systems two wrongs don't make a right (and three rights make a Nazi demo...) vigilante justice like this should be punished. That developer better hope the court he'll face accepts EULAs as valid and he never travels into a country where they aren't.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
At least here in the UK, I believe this would be a criminal offense. Of course the pirates might not want to report his crime, but he's still breaking the law.
Wow. He's certainly convinced me to give his software a try...
This guy's the limit!
I hope this developer never sells any copies - he is equating piracy with destroying people's information. If you pirate some software, you don't deprive the developer of his copy of he software (or source code), so why deprive the pirates of their own files? I know the argument of each pirated copy is a lost sale, but that blatantly isn't true. I hope this guy gets sued.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
"There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something ... If this level of piracy continues, development will stop."
Uh, no. Development will stop as the police collect your computers as evidence that you are the developer and distributor of software that intentionally erases files without user permission.
It might just be an idle threat.
It seems there would be too much liability to try and pull of a scheme like this
With cracked executables and loaders, this protection still won't do really anything. All it does is tell the pirates, "Hey! Don't use serialz or keygens. Crack & Patch me instead!". I remember all sorts of brilliant protection schemes that were made to prevent things like this cracked in no more than a week. If there is a demand, it shall be cracked.
To me, it seems that this protection scheme will only scare away the casual pirate and not the hardcore ones.
Fallout 3 will suck.
That's vigilantism, pure and simple. Doesn't matter if the person was a pirate or not, you're not allowed to commit a crime to protect your "property."
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Excuse your hasty comments? This is Slashdot - we practically demand hasty comments.
When I first read the link to the author's comments, I noticed that he doesn't actually say what will be deleted. So I was thinking maybe he deletes something that disables his own program - which wouldn't be that outrageous to me; it'd be a hassle to reinstall all the time and would discourage pirated use.
It's mentioned in the older Slashdot story, though, that he's deleting home directories. That's bad.
Also, we should note in the interests of factual correctness (something Slashdot doesn't demand) that he would delete only for cases where a pirated key was used. It doesn't say anything about incorrectly entered keys, just pirated ones. That's a little better, but I still think he's going way too far.
...on a side note, Bush has taken care of that.
;)
parasight.de
I write a shareware program (BlueBox Invoices) that lots of people have registered over the course of the past 9 years it has been around.
It is a fully functional program WITHOUT registering, yet many people take the suggestion to register, and it pays for continued development.
If you're going to get your panties in a knot over some people using your software, you probably should be writing some software more innovative than a screen caputure utility. The world is already filled with those.
Attention Users! Version 2099.0999 X of my software now comes with a special new feature! File deletion! To enable this great new feature, please find a pirated software key on the web and enter it. Any files that you have in "C:\Documents and Settings" will be deleted.
FAQ for possible problems using this great new feature:
This is why I use Windows. It's far too easy for malware to get onto a Mac and start deleting user files. PCs got over the delete random files / reformat phase of malware years ago. There's far more money to be made by keeping the machine alive.
Now the page shows it rated at the lowest value possible in all categories, and the comments are full of "don't buy this software" as well. I also noticed that searching for "Display Eater" on the site no longer returns anything, which seems to indicate they removed it from the listing.
Talk about a moronic idea -- if piracy was already a problem, the result of this will be much greater than the problems piracy ever created. And ironically enough, this will make pirating the product a safer proposition. Do you want to use a legal version, which has this file deleting "feature" that might one day go wrong and nuke something? O do you get the pirated version with the file deleting code removed from it?
This is a more extreme version of what happens with other sorts of copy prevention. There are games out there that run faster and more stable with the CD check disabled.
I just wanted to say thanks for operating this way, and I hope you've received enough from registrations to make it worth your while. I don't use BlueBox, but I appreciate the thought.
I will admit that I have way too much pirated software on my system at home. Of course, I'm also not using most of it. For the most part, I prefer to demo software I've never used - it's just too hard to get through the marketing hype to determine if it really works for me. I must have thirty or forty apps for video conversion. I use three. No, scratch that - I'm down to two now. One is freeware, and the other I registered.
Sadly, 15 day - and sometimes 30 day - trials just aren't enough. Because I'm busy, I may install something to try it, and then not really get to try it out fully for a couple of months. Which means I either get a cracked copy to try it, or I pass.
While I may not have all the software I own registered, I make sure to register those that really help - even those that don't require it. Since I'm not a programmer, I do rely on these "little" apps to help out. Rename1-4a, IrfanView, and a couple of others I find indespensible. I always make sure I pay for anything I'm still using after 6 months. If I 'm still using it, it's got to be good enough to pay for. Oddly, I still have some crakced versions I use becuase I'm too lazy to enter the real SNs. I have two or three versions of Nero floating around, not all of them with legitimate SNs, but I have three consecutive version retail registry numbers I paid for, so I'm calling it even.
Anyway, thanks for being generous. Some of us out here really appreciate it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The article and submission build on a misunderstanding. I conducted some research of my own and I've found that it does not attempt to delete the full home directory. It only deletes the ~/Library/Application Support/display_eater/ directory, i.e. files created by the trial version of the program. In fact, the developer says that the program will delete something from the home directory, but doesn't say what.
While I didn't acquire one of the pirated serial numbers that trigger the behavior, I have disassembled the program and these are my conclusions: The deletion is done by a function destroy() at offset 0xd148 that takes a single argument specifying the path to delete. destroy is called from a single location in the program:
+276 0000d3e4 3863a020 addi r3,r3,0xa020 ~/Library/Application Support/display_eater/ +280 0000d3e8 4bfffd39 bl _destroydestroy() loops over each thing contained by this directory and deletes it. I've invoked the function in this way, and it does not delete anything since that directory does not exist on my system.
So, while this anti-piracy tactic sure won't convince any potential pirates to actually pay for the software, it is not as egregious as the summary suggests.
It would be nice if someone would verify these conclusions, perhaps using a real pirated key.
You can't take the sky from me...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The summary is right. It indeed does wipe the whole home directory. http://www.versiontracker.com/php/feedback/article .php?story=20070204234239880
To see what the fuss is about, I downloaded the 'demo' and took a look inside the executable. (No way am I running the damn thing!) There are some really amateurish icons and bitmaps, and the the string table reads like it was written by an emo kid. I'd reproduce some of them here, but fucking slashcode seems to be eating the long strings.
Really, the whole thing looks like it was written by a goofy high-school kid. Since he is displaying the Apple Universal Binary logo on his site, I suspect he's in violation of the logo licence agreement, and I suspect Kagi, his payment processor, won't be too pleased with him, either.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Then you're missing out on a lot of really, really good software :)
Koingo Software admit that they were investigating the competition. If they're the competition, they could have a motive to spread FUD about Display Eater. Maybe Koingo Software "investigated" the DE and found some strings suggesting that it had some vigilante piracy fighting and then they drew their own conclusions and decided to exaggerate in the review based on what they thought would happen if they entered a pirated key.
Or, it could be that their home directory was actually deleted -- maybe they were using an older version or destroy() function malfunctioned. It could happen. The developer has probably rarely _tested_ the anti-piracy functionality, which means that it might not behave as he thought it would. I've seen programs that always crash when the trial expires -- the developers were presumably always using the full version.
I doubt that Koingo, as serious Mac developers, would go to such lengths as to use a pirated key just to "investigate the competition". Which is why I suspect that they "embellished" their story about permanently losing data.
Either way, I could have made a mistake in my 10 minute investigation and would welcome someone else to actually try it on a dummy (non-admin) account and see what happens. Personally I will never ever install a program by this developer on a production system.
The author doesn't get paid when his stuff is pirated. The fact that its digital software that can be copied unlimited times without cost is wholly irrelevant. The most important viewpoint is that of the author. If we want good software to continue to be made, not horribly bad user interface wise open source software, then you have to make sure the developer can get paid.
Simple as that.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
In the developers's own words, 'There exist several illegal cd-keys that you can use to unlock the demo program. If Display Eater detects that you are using these, it will erase something. I don't know if this is going to become Display Eater policy. If this level of piracy continues, development will stop.'
The sheer audacity of this guy's attitude over this problem is downright sickening. He's like one of those whiny little brats who'll only play a game until he starts losing, then trashes the game so no one else can cintinue playing.
If you're going to develop software, then you have to accept piracy as one of the negatives. (Though, personally, if a piece of software I wrote was being pirated, I'd be flattered knowing people wanted it bad enough to invest their time into doing so.) It's not like this guy never saw this coming (given he already keyed the software ahead of time), so why screw you're paying users over by threatening to cease development over it when it backfires? Besides, these "pirates" likely wouldn't bother using the software at all had the keying stuff been made unbreakable to begin with.
In the meanwhile, what happened to all this "trusted computing" junk that's supposed to "protect" us from stuff like this? Why aren't we sand-boxing all applications so that they only have basic read/write privileges, rather than having free reign over the system itself? Shouldn't we start looking into creating a centralized install/registration system where the OS itself handles the entire installation and approval/denial of software keys based on data the developers provide in the installation archive? That way, it is the OS itself that decides how to handle a pirated software key, rather than allowing individual developers to act as judge, jury and executioner without recourse. The developer in this article is exactly why we need such a system in place.
8==8 Bones 8==8
We bought a webcamming system from a company called Datetopia. If the php side of the software detected $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] wasn't the one it was registered to (eg: if you decided to buy video.mydomain.com and use that for it), then it would drop its tables in the database.
The softare was badly written (used register_globals, etc), and lots of the code was put in an eval() (potentially a security nightmare), and obfusicated (base64'd, etc). We decided to scrap it, rather than reverse engineer it, so we wrote our own.
If a developer does that this is bad news for the popularity of his program. If Microsoft did that (destructive action) they might start loosing existing customers.
Destructive action is an extreme case of fight against piracy and it may even be acceptable, but only if the destructive action damages the installation of the program in question and its data, not the home directory or your hard drives.
The keys that the developer refers are probably valid keys (they unlock the software) that were put in the blacklist because they were used illegally (e.g., someone spread his key around). Programming errors may happen (e.g., an error that triggers destructive action even for a legal installation) and those can be costly. Even if that is a an illegal user you could "convert" his to paying for your software if it stopped working, but not after you trashed his hard drive.
Imagine a car stereo that would blow up the whole car if tampered with. Would you buy such a stereo? What if it goes off by mistake?
Here a several other possible scenarios. suppose an employee of the store, where the software had originally been purchased, had already secretly opened and installed the the software. He then had posted the key on the Internet several weeks before someone else purchased the software. A few stores even have their own shrink wrap machines that they use on returned hardware, so he might have shrink wrapped the software again before putting it back on the shelf.
Here is another alternative. Suppose some woman had purchased the software. Her ex-boyfriend or one of her children's friends might have secretly borrowed the installation CD and installed it on another computer and posted her key on the Internet. Then, after upgrading to a new computer she might have later reinstalled the software. She then looses her small business accounting records and the novel she had been writing for the last 6 months. The ex-boyfriend who was the actual pirate would lose nothing.
The software could also have been received as a Christmas gift. The gift giver might have already opened the software, installed it and shared the key. Perhaps the gift might have even come from a vengeful ex-spouse who knew what would happen to their computer.
These are also possible problems with trying to act as judge and jury and delivering mindless automated punishment to the supposed software pirates,
His program now has the same level of trust as shady trojaned warez appz.
However such method will be cracked,and patched versions will be available.
Thats reminds me of case of Sony DRMed CDs,which turned out to be a bad idea for Sony.
Simple as that. That STILL isn't the same as a mugging.
You know what's a lot like theft, though? Having all data in your home folder taken away from you, permanently.
If you're looking for something tangible to liken to willfull disregard of copyright for personal use, try "sneaking in a movie theatre". THAT's the same: You're enjoying someone's hard work without giving them anything, but you aren't taking anything away from them.
If you catch people sneaking in your theatre, you can kick them out, you can hand them over to the proper authorities to be dealt with according to the law, but you cannot empty their pockets and trash their contents.
No matter how entitled you feel to your entry fee, you can't dish out vigilante justice.
You can't take the sky from me...
Back in 1981 my neighbor dropped about $1000 on Commodore 64 and an accounting package. He used it for about a year until one day the copy protection (floppy disk based, probably because of head mis-alignment) which the software vendor never once mentioned, falsely decided that his program was a pirated copy and wrote "PIRATEPIRATEPIRATEPIRATE" over all his business records. My neighbr went absolutely apeshit (yes, no backups), called his lawyer, and in the end an employee of the computer store spent two weeks re-entering the data from paper.
It was a stupid idea then and it is a stupid idea now.
FUD or not, I'd still be concerned that the Destroy function could go awry, and might delete files it had no business touching. That could be as simple a bug as failing to check where it's logged to before it starts killing files.
I'd also be concerned that a mere typo (or the program misreading the input) while entering a legit serial number could trigger this.
I remember some years ago a particular DOS app would delete all files in the %TEMP% directory at exit. Trouble was, it assumed that all users were savvy enough to have moved the TEMP variable away from the default, which happened to be C:\DOS. So when the program was run, at exit it proceeded to delete the contents of the user's DOS directory. (At the time the coder reacted by saying users who didn't change their TEMP variable were too stupid to live anyway... how is that his determination to make? and if so, why didn't he take steps to protect even stupid users' data??)
Several times, I've had legit software refuse to accept its legit key, and had to go find one somewhere on the net to make it work. Not just small stuff either -- in one case, the app was Win98!!
Anyway, my point is... see how easy it is for the coder to make a mistake that could cost legit users bigtime?!
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I know two steps that are FAR better antipiracy measures than putting in malicious code that can cause you to wind up in a prison:
.NET, use an obfuscater. A basic one is included with Visual Studio .NET, and you can download "community"/free versions of others. As a side effect, most code runs faster after being passed through one.
First step is simple. Update your program, and update it often. Add small new features, fix bugs, fix typos, and try to update every week or two. Have a facility to autoupdate in your program, even if its just grabbing a text file from a web server. Updates make users feel that the program is well maintained by a responsive author or development team.
Second step. If you use Java or
Now, the pirate groups are forever in catchup mode. When they have a patch for version 1.2.1, 1.2.3 is available for download and fixes a number of bugs.
Yes, pirates can work on a keygen, but if you do the algorithm correctly, they most likely will be forced to patch your code, rather just than a keygen. Of course, you can take the step of online activation like Sunbelt does.
This is illegal in the UK. It quite clearly falls under Section 3 of the Misuse of Computers Act 1990.
The fact that the aggrieved party may have been committing a crime by using the software without authorisation does not alter anything. Two wrongs do not make a right. Deleting files from a user's home directory goes above and beyond reasonable force and is a criminal offence punishable by five years' imprisonment and/or a fine.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Public Letter:
I hope the public will read this entire letter.
There has been alot of confusion regarding the copy protection of the program called Display Eater.
It is described here in:
There exists two illegal cd-keys that can be used to register the program without paying for it. When Display Eater detects these keys, it would delete your home directory.
However, this is not the case in reality. The whole purpose was to create a scare campaign. You can download, the file linked from the main page, which is now down(the link is still intact), and check it for yourself. It has http://reversecode.com/index.html
It was my hope that by creating a scare campaign, I could stop wasting time writing copy protection routines to be broken over and over. But, I was wrong, it backfired.
People started buying multiple keys, which I never intended, and in the beginning when the protection was in place, people who did not even know they had committed piracy or what piracy was were left in the dark. Legitimate users started fearing the program, which I never imagined.
A reporter called me today, and suggested that I make it free, and then have users pay for support. Or open source the program. I will consider all of these. -Reza
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/displ
A piracy tool gets pirated. Why am I not surprised?
Hmmm, lets see, why would I want to capture a video on my screen to a quicktime movie? It must be because I do not legitimately own the video being displayed on my screen.
This guy was tempting fate from the start. Dollars to donuts its the MAFIAA that is pirating his product.
This product should have been underground to start with, and should have stayed there.
Now he claims that this was only a 'scare campaign' and the program doesn't actually delete anything. What ever might be the truth, I still wouldn't trust this person.
I wouldn't dare to install anything from this guy, since there would be no way to know what kind of tantrum he was having when he was coding and what nasty suprises might come bundled with his software. Hiring this person would also be pretty risky. If he don't get high enough salary, he will plant a bomb in your companys software.
I doubt that this guy can blame piracy for the lack of money he gets from his software. I think that if you actually write good enough application you will also get paid. And if nobody buys your program, I think you should first look into mirror and at your product. Is it good enough, how many people would actually need this kind of program?
Or are there zillions of pirated copies of Display Eater around and this guy would be a millionaire if it wasn't for those nasty pirates?
Well, after this publicity, there won't be any kind of Display Eaters around. Hopefully. And perhaps this developer should be introduced with the law, just to make sure that he won't be coding any more malware in the future. We have enough of that allready.
Even if Microsoft and RIAA can get away with 'scare campaigns', you might not.
I will remember this name, Reza and keep far away from your 'products'.
Hmm, I just wonder what sort of lawsuits would follow if someone bought a legit key but made a mistake in entering it, or the registry entry gets corrupted (something that obviously never happens..).
:-).
This is a simple breach of virtually any computer related laws I can think of. If you have a problem with piracy you're welcome to stop the program from working - you have, however, no right to act as judge and jury and become a vigilante, nor do you have right of access to the computing resources and information your code is near.
In short, if you do that you're no better than a virus author and thus deserve the same treatment.
You can't even plead temporary insanity (well, OK, maybe permanent insanity
Insert