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Pirates Crack Microsoft's UWP Protection, Five Layers of DRM Defeated (torrentfreak.com)
A piracy scene group has managed to get past the five layers of DRM in Microsoft's Unified Windows Platform UWP -- which enables software developers to create applications that can run across many devices. From a report: This week it became clear that the UWP system, previously believed to be uncrackable, had fallen to pirates. After being released on October 31, 2017, the somewhat underwhelming Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection became the first victim at the hands of popular scene group, CODEX. "This is the first scene release of a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) game. Therefore we would like to point out that it will of course only work on Windows 10. This particular game requires Windows 10 version 1607 or newer," the group said in its release notes. CODEX says it's important that the game isn't allowed to communicate with the Internet so the group advises users to block the game's executable in their firewall.
Kudos to CODEX for this impressive feat! They are a living reminder that hard work, diligence, and persistence will ultimately lead to success!
previously believed to be uncrackable
By whom?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
And so is Silverlight and Kinect.
I'm witnessing a Roomba in action for the first time ever.
If you want to be entertained, put a few chairs where there shouldn't be. It's both truly amazing and stupidly funny at the same time.
I wonder how much human effort is devoted to both construction and circumvention of DRM schemes. We've seen time and time again that it doesn't work and is ultimately defeated rendering the entire exercise ultimately futile, and yet so few seemingly try to do otherwise. If all of that effort were put to some other use, I'm curious about what could be accomplished. The individuals who work on this stuff on either side must be some incredibly intelligent people to do what they do, so I suspect their talents are utterly wasted on something as pointless as this.
...is that there's apparently actual UWP apps out there, waiting to be cracked.
I had pirated Zoo Tycoon and it was the best thing ever but the day I saw Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection was the day my world changed. Could I have forked over the money? That's obviously crazy talk but since then I've been all consumed with this the sinking feeling I was missing out on one of the greatest treasures that life has to offer. Now that I can pirate Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection, it feels like a piece of my soul has been restored! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Our industry puts effort into making maintenance even more difficult, when it's already hard enough. And people who try to make things work more easily, are "outsiders".
It's totally perverted.
People should feel free to pirate anything with DRM. You'd have to be a piece of shit to pay or otherwise financially support that crap.
I just wish one day soon that someone would crack the playready and widevine on my Media Center so I could edit out commercials and save to .mkv. That is a dream I have anyway. Sigh.
You do realize that Cracking/Pirating games/movies anything with DRM is not about money. It has never been about that. It has and always will be about the challenge of defeating a technical wall that 1 human puts up and says no other human can over come. It started with Agriculture, then Industry, Medicine and now the Digital-Age and so on. There are clones of just about everything out there, good or bad, worth it or not. Copying is in the human DNA, it is what humans do and will also do.
Copy, Overcome, Adapt, Success.
Impeach - when legislative body formally levels charges against a high official of government. E.g. "The last US President to be impeached in the House was Bill Clinton in 1998"
Empeach - when you are placed inside a large peach. E.g. "James and the Giant Peach is a children's story about the empeachment of the eponymous James".
Bring on President Pence I say!
Who cares?
Seriously, does anyone still buy stuff where you have to jump through 10 hoops just to play the fucking game you just bought and still be accused of being a dirty, rotten bastard who might think of pondering considering or even dreaming of "pirating" it?
As long as you keep buying that shit, studios will think you're ok with it. It's your money, use it to show them what you think of their attempt to tell you when, how and if you may use software that you legally paid for.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This seems like a bit of a wasted effort. I suspect the number of people excited about the prospect of being able to pirate UWP apps is roughly zero. Most people wouldn't want a UWP app even if they were given it for free.
UWP is one of the most invasive pieces of shit I have ever had the mispleasure of working with.
If you so much as look at the files of a UWP application wrong, there's a good chance you'll fuck it up (thanks to the encrypted file system bullshit) and your only option to fix it is to re-download the entire application from scratch (which is great if you're dealing with a 45GB game). Forget about backing up anything UWP related- it's literally impossible, by design. And good luck getting an older version of an app if the latest version has issues with your system- that too is impossible.
The sooner UWP and the Windows Store dies, the better.
...That DRM is a complete waste of time, effort and resources. Give it up already, dump the DRM, make people happy. Keep the DRM, get cracked again.. and again.. and again. Same old insanity: Deploying DRM expecting it can't be cracked, but every time it is cracked. Yawn.
So much for this being the future of security for running applications. Another failed Microsoft scheme and now were talking progressive apps which are coming in Spring update. So I guess this will be proclaimed the most secure platform after UWP. Let's just admit nothing is 100% secure and leave it at that.
Edge certainly as a UWP isn't much more secure then Internet Explorer, in fact many times they receive the same type of patches. Just have to assume everything is vulnerable and updates are needed, and the faster they get released the better and secure something is. Microsoft in my opinion is the worst about fixing issues and frankly they should just abandon Edge and IE and focus on Windows, Office and cloud services.
I had shoeboxes full of 5.25" floppy disks back in the Apple ][+ days and continue to pirate anything I can these days. Hacked consoles loaded with pirated games, Emulators filled with pirates games, etc.
The only exception, I shit you not, is non-DRM things. I've spend hundreds of dollars at GOG.com based on principle.
"...important that the game isn't allowed to communicate with the Internet so the group advises users to block the game's executable in their firewall...."
Dotard Windows users are supposed to have the knowledge and skills to monkey with the firewall.
On the other hand borking your OS from the internet keeps me in business.
They keep using the word "Pirate" over and over too. What felonies were committed on the high seas?
Are they actually talking about "Copyright infringement"? In that case, what copyrighted work has been stolen simply by "cracking" this system? If the door is unlocked, does that mean that the possessions have automatically been stolen?
President Pence? Mike PONCE is guilty of obstruction also, and will be thrown into the woodchipper with the great obese combover traitor himself.
Oh, the fools! If only they'd built it with 6 layers of DRM! When will they learn!?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What I didn't realise is that it will take this long.
Then I realised something else; it didn;t take this long. It just became common knowledge now. ;-)
Realistically, how many devices we are talking about? No prototypes, niche and failed devices such as windows phones.
So, how many?
What is this, the new "I'm behind seven proxies" for software?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
GameboyRMH blathered:
There will be, because when the wall is breached we take it ALL down to demonstrate to the wall-builders that they have failed. When that first bit of the Berlin wall was breached, they didn't leave all the rest of it in place.
The challenge stops when idiots stop putting up walls.
<facepalm>
You are an idiot.
I've been around the scene for a long time - probably longer than you've been alive. R. Bubba Magillicuddy has been a personal friend of mine since he was 13 years old, and I know from many discussions with him and other crackers on the subject over the years that there's absolutely NOTHING ideological in his or his peers' motives for breaking DRM.
R. Bubba started cracking games when he was 12, because he wanted to play them, and couldn't afford to buy them himself. So he taught himself to circumvent copy protection schemes (in assembler!), which let him borrow games from his friends and make working copies for himself. By the time he was 15, he was one of the most accomplished crackers on the planet. The release groups he worked with would overnight him copies of newly-released games from all over the world, just so they could claim bragging rights to being the first to have working cracks of them.
Bubba's motives were never ideological. Neither were those of the other top-flight crackers I've interviewed. They all did it for fun, for recognition on the scene, and for bragging rights. (For instance, other crackers beat 688 Attack Submarine's copy protection, too, but none of their cracks caused the teletype display to print out "Cracked by R. Bubba Magillicuddy!" when you typed any random string into the authenticity check. Bubba could have simply skipped that check routine altogether, of course, but making the game do his bragging for him was just too tempting an exploit to pass up.)
It's not a moral crusade. It wasn't then and it's not now. It's a hobby that lets you play $100 games without paying $100 for them. And the people who merely download and play those games, rather than cracking them personally, aren't doing it as some kind of twisted moral crusade, either. They do it because they don't have to pay actual money for cracked games.
That's it, that's all. The crackers crack games for the lulz and the ego-boo. The lusers download and install them because they're kids, and they don't have the money to spend on games - because their allowances go for dope, and kicks, and gear, instead
You know: priorities ...
Check out my novel.
This sounds a bit like those Gilette ads. What does layer 5 do that layers 1-4 could not already achieve?
UWP is a nice thing as a concept but really badly implemented, hope it gets better but most universal development is cumbersome with a more strict list of requirements (there are more you can'ts than you could), so you have to give an underpowered application, it reminds of WING32 graphics were driven by GDI.
I do hope it gets better but I can't fell in that hole again.
Simple fix for MS. Just put in logic which requires communication after a period of time. In the event of non-communication then you send a notification to the user, and ask them to re-install to fix the "glitch"
It's the first piece of UWP software anyone actually wanted to pirate.
This sounds a bit like those Gilette ads. What does layer 5 do that layers 1-4 could not already achieve?
They are simply trying to get crackers to give up by giving them a high barrier to entry, the reality is microsoft and other big companies want to move us to encrypted computing but cpu's really aren't fast enough. Ideally they want everything encrypted. You should google some policy papers about how big corps plan to "take back the internet" from the wild west. It is enlightening to say the least.
What about our duty to ignore unjust laws to make them enforceable so as to prevent them from affecting us. Civil disobedience is a responsibility of every citizen to maintain. It all of our responsibilities as American citizens to enmasse violate copyright laws to give us in the best chance of our legal system aligning with reality eventually.
Only to make Microsoft more money and lock users in to doing what Microsoft wants.
Combine this with forced spying, a fucking advertising ID in the O/S, installing programs they think you want w/out your approval and other extremely scummy shitty dirty user-hostile and anti-consumer implementations.
Fuck Microsoft, they're pieces of shit now.