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Pirates Crack Microsoft's UWP Protection, Five Layers of DRM Defeated (torrentfreak.com)

Posted by msmash on from the challenge-accepted dept.

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.

15 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Congratulations! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Kudos to CODEX for this impressive feat! They are a living reminder that hard work, diligence, and persistence will ultimately lead to success!

  2. "Uncracakble"? by drunken_boxer777 · · Score: 5, Funny

    previously believed to be uncrackable

    By whom?

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    1. Re:"Uncracakble"? by Opportunist · · Score: 3, Funny

      By the MS marketing department.

      Duh.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:"Uncracakble"? by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      I think the act of marketing it as uncrackable just attracts the attention of the kind of people looking for a good challenge.

      If I had to make and market my own DRM I'd brand it as "some weak shit that a five year old could probably break in under ten minutes and totally not worth anyone's actual time due to being so trivial and beneath your abilities." Who's going to try seeking out any glory from cracking that?

  3. Effort by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re: Effort by Sarten-X · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is pretty much dead-on correct. Sorry, folks, but we live in a capitalist society. You aren't entitled to anything just by right of being able to copy, take, or otherwise acquire it.

      If you can't afford (or don't want to pay for) some piece of software, don't use it. It's that simple. In many cases there are FLOSS alternatives that will do the job (perhaps not as easily or effectively, but well enough to pass muster), or especially in the case of games, the software itself is a luxury that you can simply do without. I'm terribly sorry if you feel you just can't live without your Zoo Tycoon Ultimate Animal Collection, but that's the way the world works. You don't get to cheat and get off scot-free.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    2. Re: Effort by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't necessarily buy that argument. There are plenty of games that I could just go out and pirate, but websites like GOG (make it easy for me to buy those games instead. It's mostly a lot of older games that have run their course, but newer titles like those in the Witcher series or some of Obsidian's newer releases have been made available there on release without any DRM and those companies are managing to be financially successful.

      At some point, you probably start spending more on DRM than you gain by through sales that are lost to piracy. I suspect that a lot of piracy of software is done because it's the most convenient way to consume or in some cases the only way to consume. If you're not providing a legal way for digital distribution to occur in some countries, it's little surprise that willing consumers will revert to pirate copies. The other side comes down to economics. You can't sell a $60 game or a $20 movie into a market where those values constitute a monthly wage. Piracy in those territories does not represent a lost sale because it could never have been on to begin with. If you want to sell into those markets, you need to drop prices to a few dollars and it's very likely that you'll get some paying customers.

      If you spend $200,000 on developing, implementing, and supporting (you know, when it invariably fucks over a paying customer and they're calling tech support) DRM, but the inclusion only generates an extra $50,000 in revenue then it's a waste. Everyone wants to believe that they're potentially losing millions, but it's clearly not that much. If you use Hollywood's figures for piracy the amount comes out to something larger than the GDP of the entire planet, which should tell you how baseless the calculations are.

    3. Re: Effort by smallfries · · Score: 4, Interesting

      What complete bullshit. Just because laws governing the copyright of software have been bought and paid for does not mean that we must obey them.

      Pragmatically: take whatever software you want because there is no ideal drm scheme that can stop you.

      Ethically: go for it, software is simply an expression of knowledge and copying it does no harm.

      There is no scarity in digital goods other than that we bind ourselves into, so why not go for it.

      (I say this as a programmer)

      --
      Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
    4. Re: Effort by Kjella · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is pretty much dead-on correct. Sorry, folks, but we live in a capitalist society.

      Funny you should say that since DRM is the jack-booted thug enforcing licenses which is a war on ownership and exactly the opposite of traditional capitalism. What we're heading for is more like modern serfdom where you own nothing and license all your software and media subject to the whims of global mega-corporations who decides when they're altering the terms and when your rented experience expires and whether you've violated some sort of rule in that 100-page EULA you didn't read. And with IoT and self-driving cars on the horizon that concept will probably soon be extended to hardware too. Sure you can always say no... in which case you get no security updates and/or everything stops working, it's not like you have a real choice. The "buying and selling" model is on the way out...

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re: Effort by Kurrelgyre · · Score: 2

      Even if it's digital and an expression of knowledge that costs nothing to copy, if the person who created it doesn't want you to have it, you shouldn't get to have it. And if you do somehow acquire it, you shouldn't be smug enough about the whole thing to think you're somehow in the right.

      You don't get to decide what other people do with their stuff.

    6. Re: Effort by cyber-vandal · · Score: 2

      You work for free then?

  4. Oh sweet jebus at last! by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  5. Re: All 5 layers of DRM have been breached! by UnknowingFool · · Score: 3, Funny

    Clearly it needs to go to 11.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  6. Buy Nary ... by thomst · · Score: 2

    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.
  7. There's a reason it took so long. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's the first piece of UWP software anyone actually wanted to pirate.