Would You Tell People How To Crack Your Software?

An anonymous reader writes "Fed up with piracy and the availability of cracked versions of his software, Cobalt Strike developer Raphael Mudge wrote a blog post telling people how to crack his software. Some gifts are poisoned, and Raphael goes into deep detail about how to backdoor his software and use it to distribute malware. Will this increase piracy of his software, or will it discourage would-be pirates from downloading cracked versions?"

Comments

Tongue in cheek

[amicusNYCL]

There are also several .sl files. These are Sleep files. Sleep is a simple scripting language I’ve worked on since 2002. I write in Sleep because I’m very efficient with it.

For the aspiring cracker, Sleep is a welcome sight. Its files do not ship in a compiled form. They’re available as plaintext inside of the application archive. A plaintext file requires a special tool, called a text editor, to change its content. I recommend notepad.exe or pico. Linux hackers may use WINE to run notepad.exe. Type:

wine notepad.exe

Well done, sir.

Re:Tongue in cheek

[brit74]

I'll take the pirate stuff any day of the week, because the groups that do it are small enough that reputation matters; It's their only currency.

Yeah, because the *reputation* of the software companies doesn't matter at all. (roll eyes)

A large corporation can just claim "oh noes! piracy destroyed my business!" and get a fat handout and a pile of FBI agents with orders to beat people in their homes until money falls out.

What a load of crap. A fat handout? Do you have any clue at all what you're talking about? Prove it by showing some instances of the government giving money to companies because of claimed losses due to piracy. What a load of crap. I can't think of any companies that have made a bunch of money by "beating people in their homes until money falls out". You're seriously in fantasy land with this one. But, hey, whatever fantasy makes you feel good about pirating other people's hard work without paying a dime. You're a real hero. The world owes you everything for free.

Pirates on the other hand... release a single malware-infested item and the forums fill up with complaints, and that group never gets any respect again.

Yeah, because real companies can release a malware-infested piece of software and suffer no consequences. Give me a break.

Bittorrent also ensures, at the protocol level, that everything downloaded matches what was uploaded.

Oh, so if a malware infested piece of software is uploaded, Bittorrent will make sure you're downloading the same malware-infested software that someone uploaded? That's reassuring.

Even Bill Gates said if you're gonna pirate, he hopes you'll pirate Microsoft... it's a sign of a software's usefulness.

Bill Gates prefers you pirate his software over someone elses because it helps block other people out of the market. If you're trained on Microsoft software, you're more likely to buy it in the future than if you learned some other piece of software. It's good for blocking other people out of the market (and it's most useful if you're a monopoly or nearly a monopoly) because if helps prevent other companies from getting a foot in the door.

Re:Oh, damnit... I've been trolled.

[Zironic]

It probably is that simple for a very simple reason. His target audience isn't really poor kids that just want to try out hacking, he's selling the licences for 2.5k a pop/year so he's obviously targeting companies, companies that would rather not crack the copies regardless of how easy it is because of legal liabilities.