Software cracking (known as 'breaking' in the 1980s^[1]) is the modification of software to remove or disable features which are considered undesirable by the person cracking the software, especially copy protection features (including protection against the manipulation of software, serial number, hardware key, date checks and disc check) or software annoyances like nag screens and adware.

A crack refers to the means of achieving, for example a stolen serial number or a tool that performs that act of cracking.^[2] Some of these tools are called keygen, patch, or loader. A keygen is a handmade product serial number generator that often offers the ability to generate working serial numbers in your own name. A patch is a small computer program that modifies the machine code of another program. This has the advantage for a cracker to not include a large executable in a release when only a few bytes are changed.^[3] A loader modifies the startup flow of a program and does not remove the protection but circumvents it.^[4][5] A well-known example of a loader is a trainer used to cheat in games.^[6]Fairlight pointed out in one of their .nfo files that these type of cracks are not allowed for warez scene game releases.^[7][4][8] A nukewar has shown that the protection may not kick in at any point for it to be a valid crack.^[9]

Alsocontains link to trailer accessories and parts dealer.- Image in French, use totranslate if necessary. 1 page simple auto trailer plan. Tent layout software. Free Car Trailer Plans-Illustrations, BOM and instructions for building a car trailer. Various Free Trailer Blue Prints from the NDSU-Free plans of a single axle 6' x 40' trailer.- Free trailer drawings for a 6' x 20'two wheel axle trailer.- 8' x 24' Flatbed trailer rack with 3' high sides and2 drop doors.- 4'X5' steel frame free utility trailer plans.

The distribution of cracked copies is illegal in most countries. There have been lawsuits over cracking software.^[10] It might be legal to use cracked software in certain circumstances.^[11] Educational resources for reverse engineering and software cracking are, however, legal and available in the form of Crackme programs.

History[edit]

Knowing how to crack a program using an available ready made patch, keygenerator or cracked files does not earn yourself the title “software cracker”. Bach trumpet serial number guide. Only if you are able to think out of the box and figure out how to bypass the software protection yourself, then you consider yourself as a software cracker.

The first software copy protection was applied to software for the Apple II,^[12]Atari 800, and Commodore 64 computers.^{[citation needed]}. Software publishers have implemented increasingly complex methods in an effort to stop unauthorized copying of software.

On the Apple II, unlike modern computers that use standardized device drivers to manage device communications, the operating system directly controlled the step motor that moves the floppy drive head, and also directly interpreted the raw data, called nibbles, read from each track to identify the data sectors. This allowed complex disk-based software copy protection, by storing data on half tracks (0, 1, 2.5, 3.5, 5, 6..), quarter tracks (0, 1, 2.25, 3.75, 5, 6..), and any combination thereof. In addition, tracks did not need to be perfect rings, but could be sectioned so that sectors could be staggered across overlapping offset tracks, the most extreme version being known as spiral tracking. It was also discovered that many floppy drives did not have a fixed upper limit to head movement, and it was sometimes possible to write an additional 36th track above the normal 35 tracks. The standard Apple II copy programs could not read such protected floppy disks, since the standard DOS assumed that all disks had a uniform 35-track, 13- or 16-sector layout. Special nibble-copy programs such as Locksmith and Copy II Plus could sometimes duplicate these disks by using a reference library of known protection methods; when protected programs were cracked they would be completely stripped of the copy protection system, and transferred onto a standard format disk that any normal Apple II copy program could read.

One of the primary routes to hacking these early copy protections was to run a program that simulates the normal CPU operation. The CPU simulator provides a number of extra features to the hacker, such as the ability to single-step through each processor instruction and to examine the CPU registers and modified memory spaces as the simulation runs (any modern disassembler/debugger can do this). The Apple II provided a built-in opcode disassembler, allowing raw memory to be decoded into CPU opcodes, and this would be utilized to examine what the copy-protection was about to do next. Generally there was little to no defense available to the copy protection system, since all its secrets are made visible through the simulation. However, because the simulation itself must run on the original CPU, in addition to the software being hacked, the simulation would often run extremely slowly even at maximum speed.

On Atari 8-bit computers, the most common protection method was via 'bad sectors'. These were sectors on the disk that were intentionally unreadable by the disk drive. The software would look for these sectors when the program was loading and would stop loading if an error code was not returned when accessing these sectors. Special copy programs were available that would copy the disk and remember any bad sectors. The user could then use an application to spin the drive by constantly reading a single sector and display the drive RPM. With the disk drive top removed a small screwdriver could be used to slow the drive RPM below a certain point. Once the drive was slowed down the application could then go and write 'bad sectors' where needed. When done the drive RPM was sped up back to normal and an uncracked copy was made. Of course cracking the software to expect good sectors made for readily copied disks without the need to meddle with the disk drive. As time went on more sophisticated methods were developed, but almost all involved some form of malformed disk data, such as a sector that might return different data on separate accesses due to bad data alignment. Products became available (from companies such as Happy Computers) which replaced the controller BIOS in Atari's 'smart' drives. These upgraded drives allowed the user to make exact copies of the original program with copy protections in place on the new disk.

On the Commodore 64, several methods were used to protect software. For software distributed on ROM cartridges, subroutines were included which attempted to write over the program code. If the software was on ROM, nothing would happen, but if the software had been moved to RAM, the software would be disabled. Because of the operation of Commodore floppy drives, one write protection scheme would cause the floppy drive head to bang against the end of its rail, which could cause the drive head to become misaligned. In some cases, cracked versions of software were desirable to avoid this result. A misaligned drive head was rare usually fixing itself by smashing against the rail stops. Another brutal protection scheme was grinding from track 1 to 40 and back a few times.

Most of the early software crackers were computer hobbyists who often formed groups that competed against each other in the cracking and spreading of software. Breaking a new copy protection scheme as quickly as possible was often regarded as an opportunity to demonstrate one's technical superiority rather than a possibility of money-making. Some low skilled hobbyists would take already cracked software and edit various unencrypted strings of text in it to change messages a game would tell a game player, often something considered vulgar. Uploading the altered copies on file sharing networks provided a source of laughs for adult users. The cracker groups of the 1980s started to advertise themselves and their skills by attaching animated screens known as crack intros in the software programs they cracked and released. Once the technical competition had expanded from the challenges of cracking to the challenges of creating visually stunning intros, the foundations for a new subculture known as demoscene were established. Demoscene started to separate itself from the illegal 'warez scene' during the 1990s and is now regarded as a completely different subculture. Nursing lab manual. Many software crackers have later grown into extremely capable software reverse engineers; the deep knowledge of assembly required in order to crack protections enables them to reverse engineerdrivers in order to port them from binary-only drivers for Windows to drivers with source code for Linux and other free operating systems. Also because music and game intro was such an integral part of gaming the music format and graphics became very popular when hardware became affordable for the home user.

With the rise of the Internet, software crackers developed secretive online organizations. In the latter half of the nineties, one of the most respected sources of information about 'software protection reversing' was Fravia's website.

Most of the well-known or 'elite' cracking groups make software cracks entirely for respect in the 'Scene', not profit. From there, the cracks are eventually leaked onto public Internet sites by people/crackers who use well-protected/secure FTP release archives, which are made into full copies and sometimes sold illegally by other parties.

The Scene today is formed of small groups of skilled people, who informally compete to have the best crackers, methods of cracking, and reverse engineering.

+HCU[edit]

The High Cracking University (+HCU), was founded by Old Red Cracker (+ORC), considered a genius of reverse engineering and a legendary figure in RCE, to advance research into Reverse Code Engineering (RCE). He had also taught and authored many papers on the subject, and his texts are considered classics in the field and are mandatory reading for students of RCE.^[13]

The addition of the '+' sign in front of the nickname of a reverser signified membership in the +HCU. Amongst the students of +HCU were the top of the elite Windows reversers worldwide.^[13] +HCU published a new reverse engineering problem annually and a small number of respondents with the best replies qualified for an undergraduate position at the university.^[13]

+Fravia was a professor at +HCU. Fravia's website was known as '+Fravia's Pages of Reverse Engineering' and he used it to challenge programmers as well as the wider society to 'reverse engineer' the 'brainwashing of a corrupt and rampant materialism'. In its heyday, his website received millions of visitors per year and its influence was 'widespread'.^[13]

Nowadays most of the graduates of +HCU have migrated to Linux and few have remained as Windows reversers. The information at the university has been rediscovered by a new generation of researchers and practitioners of RCE who have started new research projects in the field.^[13]

Methods[edit]

The most common software crack is the modification of an application's binary to cause or prevent a specific key branch in the program's execution. This is accomplished by reverse engineering the compiled program code using a debugger such as SoftICE,^[14]x64dbg, OllyDbg,^[15]GDB, or MacsBug until the software cracker reaches the subroutine that contains the primary method of protecting the software (or by disassembling an executable file with a program such as IDA). The binary is then modified using the debugger or a hex editor or monitor in a manner that replaces a prior branching opcode with its complement or a NOPopcode so the key branch will either always execute a specific subroutine or skip over it. Almost all common software cracks are a variation of this type. Proprietary software developers are constantly developing techniques such as code obfuscation, encryption, and self-modifying code to make this modification increasingly difficult. Even with these measures being taken, developers struggle to combat software cracking. This is because it is very common for a professional to publicly release a simple cracked EXE or Retrium Installer for public download, eliminating the need for inexperienced users to crack the software themselves.

A specific example of this technique is a crack that removes the expiration period from a time-limited trial of an application. These cracks are usually programs that alter the program executable and sometimes the .dll or .so linked to the application. Similar cracks are available for software that requires a hardware dongle. A company can also break the copy protection of programs that they have legally purchased but that are licensed to particular hardware, so that there is no risk of downtime due to hardware failure (and, of course, no need to restrict oneself to running the software on bought hardware only).

Another method is the use of special software such as CloneCD to scan for the use of a commercial copy protection application. After discovering the software used to protect the application, another tool may be used to remove the copy protection from the software on the CD or DVD. This may enable another program such as Alcohol 120%, CloneDVD, Game Jackal, or Daemon Tools to copy the protected software to a user's hard disk. Popular commercial copy protection applications which may be scanned for include SafeDisc and StarForce.^[16]

In other cases, it might be possible to decompile a program in order to get access to the original source code or code on a level higher than machine code. This is often possible with scripting languages and languages utilizing JIT compilation. An example is cracking (or debugging) on the .NET platform where one might consider manipulating CIL to achieve one's needs. Java'sbytecode also works in a similar fashion in which there is an intermediate language before the program is compiled to run on the platform dependent machine code.

Advanced reverse engineering for protections such as SecuROM, SafeDisc, StarForce, or Denuvo requires a cracker, or many crackers to spend much time studying the protection, eventually finding every flaw within the protection code, and then coding their own tools to 'unwrap' the protection automatically from executable (.EXE) and library (.DLL) files.

There are a number of sites on the Internet that let users download cracks produced by warez groups for popular games and applications (although at the danger of acquiring malicious software that is sometimes distributed via such sites).^{[citation needed]} Although these cracks are used by legal buyers of software, they can also be used by people who have downloaded or otherwise obtained unauthorized copies (often through P2P networks).

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Kevelson, Morton (October 1985). 'Isepic'. Ahoy!. pp. 71–73. Retrieved June 27, 2014. The origin of the term probably lies in the activity burglars in the still of the night.
2. ^Tulloch, Mitch (2003). Microsoft Encyclopedia of Security(PDF). Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Press. p. 68. ISBN0735618771.
3. ^Craig, Paul; Ron, Mark (April 2005). 'Chapter 4: Crackers'. In Burnett, Mark (ed.). Software Piracy Exposed - Secrets from the Dark Side Revealed. Publisher: Andrew Williams, Page Layout and Art: Patricia Lupien, Acquisitions Editor: Jaime Quigley, Copy Editor: Judy Eby, Technical Editor: Mark Burnett, Indexer: Nara Wood, Cover Designer: Michael Kavish. United States of America: Syngress Publishing. pp. 75–76. doi:10.1016/B978-193226698-6/50029-5. ISBN1-932266-98-4.
4. ^ ^abFLT (January 22, 2013). 'The_Sims_3_70s_80s_and_90s_Stuff-FLT'. This can be the only reason you have come to the conclusion that a modified startup flow is the same like the imitated behavior of a protection, like an EMU does it.
5. ^Shub-Nigurrath [ARTeam]; ThunderPwr [ARTeam] (January 2006). 'Cracking with Loaders: Theory, General Approach, and a Framework'. CodeBreakers Magazine. Universitas-Virtualis Research Project. 1 (1). A loader is a program able to load in memory and running another program.
6. ^Nigurrath, Shub (May 2006). 'Guide on how to play with processes memory, writing loaders, and Oraculumns'. CodeBreakers Magazine. Universitas-Virtualis Research Project. 1 (2).
7. ^FLT (September 29, 2013). 'Test_Drive_Ferrari_Legends_PROPER-FLT'. Test.Drive.Ferrari.Racing.Legends-SKIDROW was released with a 'Loader' and not a cracked exe. This is why you see the original exe renamed to 'TDFerrari_o.exe'. As this is not allowed and in this case considerably slows down the game with Xlive messages while starting and playing the game, you can see why we have included a proper cracked.
8. ^SKIDROW (January 21, 2013). 'Test.Drive.Ferrari.Racing.Legends.Read.Nfo-SKIDROW'. Yes our 'method' is a loader and our competitors have used the same method for 'cracking' xlive games like this.
9. ^'Batman.Arkham.City-FiGHTCLUB nukewar'. December 2, 2011. Archived from the original on September 13, 2014. UNNUKED: game.plays.full no.issues crack.is.fine no.single.byte.patch.used protection.bypass.means.not.active.means.removed protection.does.not.kick.in.at.any.point this.or.removal.makes.no.difference [ZoNeNET]
10. ^Cheng, Jacqui (September 27, 2006). 'Microsoft files lawsuit over DRM crack'. Ars Technica.
11. ^Fravia (November 1998). 'Is reverse engineering legal?'.
12. ^Pearson, Jordan (July 24, 2017). 'Programmers Are Racing to Save Apple II Software Before It Goes Extinct'. Motherboard. Archived from the original on December 26, 2017. Retrieved January 27, 2018.
13. ^ ^abcdeCyrus Peikari; Anton Chuvakin (January 12, 2004). Security Warrior. 'O'Reilly Media, Inc.'. p. 31. ISBN978-0-596-55239-8.
14. ^Ankit, Jain; Jason, Kuo; Jordan, Soet; Brian, Tse (April 2007). 'Software Cracking (April 2007)'(PDF). The University of British Columbia - Electrical and Computer Engineering. Retrieved January 27, 2018.Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
15. ^Wójcik, Bartosz. 'Reverse engineering tools review'. pelock.com. PELock. Archived from the original on September 13, 2017. Retrieved February 16, 2018.
16. ^Gamecopyworld Howto

Software cracking groups have been around for a long time. Many people will think that they are unethical because they are defeating the software licensing system to illegally reset a trial software (shareware) or turn it into an fully functional program without having to purchase the license. One may wonder the reason for doing this but most of the time it is not for monetary gain but as a challenge to know how “it works” and to gain more knowledge through unpacking, debugging and analyzing the program. The cracks that are being released to the public are a proof of concept for a specific version and they don’t normally re-crack it again when a new version of the program is released.

Knowing how to crack a program using an available ready made patch, keygenerator or cracked files does not earn yourself the title “software cracker”. Only if you are able to think out of the box and figure out how to bypass the software protection yourself, then you consider yourself as a software cracker. Unfortunately it is nearly impossible to have someone to teach or coach you on how to crack programs other than learning it yourself from cracking tutorials that can be found in YouTube. World pc games free download.

Crack My Software Torrent

Before checking out the advanced cracking tutorials, we can show you a very basic and logical method on how to crack programs yourself based on an old patch that does not work with the latest version. For example, an offset patcher for a program called ViceVersa Pro v2.5 build 2512 released on 3 July 2013 by Nemo from team SnD will not work for the current version 2.5 build 2513 (notice the difference in the build number). The patcher reports “wrong filesize or already patched!”

It is possible that the software protection isn’t updated to prevent the patcher from working, but the patcher did not work with the latest version because the program was recompiled, moving the location of the bytes that the patcher supposed to change and failing the CRC32 check. Here is how to detect which bytes are being changed by the patcher and how to re-create a new patcher that could work for the latest version.

1. First you will need to search, download and install the older version of ViceVersa Pro v2.5 build 2512.

2. Then search and use ViceVersa.Pro.2.5.build.2512.patch-SND.zip to patch the program, with the “Make Backup” checkbox ticked.

3. Download dUP2, extract the RAR file with an archiver and run dup2.exe.

4. Click on Project menubar and select New.

5. It is optional to fill up the information in the Patch Info window so that the GUI of the patcher will contain the text rather than blank. Or you can just click the Save button to continue. It is advisable to tick the “Run patch with administrator rights” checkbox because most of the time you’ll need to run the patch from the Program Files directory and it will fail to patch if you do not run it as admin.

6. Right click on an empty space in dUP2, hover on Add and select [Search and Replace Patch].

7. You’ll notice that [Search and Replace Patch] will appear in the Patch Script window. Double click on it to open up a new Search and Replace Patch window.

8. Click compare files button.

9. Now you’ll need to select the original and patch file for the compare module to check for the location of the bytes that was changed by the patcher. Most of the time the original file will have an additional .bak extension at the end while the patched file will be the program’s original file name. Click the Compare button once you’ve selected both the original and patched file.

10. Click OK button to close the comparison done popup. You may see one or a few lines being added to search pattern and replace pattern. Click on the browse button to select the Target File that you want to patch. Click Save.

Important Note: You should only see a few search and replace patterns added to the list and not too many until the dUP2 program hangs. If there’s too many, you may have selected the wrong original or patched file for comparison.

11. The final step is to create your own patch by clicking the Project menu bar, select Create Patch and save it to your hard drive.

Free Full Crack Software Download

12. You can now install the latest version of ViceVersa Pro v2.5 build 2513. After installation has been completed, copy the patch that you’ve created with dUP2 to the program’s folder, run it and click the Patch button. This time you should see the message “File Patched! OK”.

13. The patch that you created works! As you can see from the screenshot below, the program is now licensed instead of using the evaluation period.

Remember, the method shown above will work if the software protection is unchanged and provided if you are still able to find the older version of the program which the old patch works on.

Final note: You may have noticed that the patcher created by dUP2 is being detected as a virus by some antivirus software but dUP2 program itself is not detected. Rest assured that both dUP2 and the patcher created by it are free from virus. Think about this, if dUP2 is capable of creating a virus, shouldn’t the antivirus have detected dUP2 as virus too?

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and we do not encourage software cracking. The software ViceVersa Pro was used as an example in this article and we do not have intention of cracking it. If you find that a shareware is really helpful, you should purchase a license to support the author for them to continue improving it.

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Concurrent RDP Patcher Enables Remote Desktop in Windows 7 Home Premium5 Free Real Time Non-Indexing Search Programs for WindowsManually Update AVP Tool Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool Signature DatabasesCrack or Decrypt VNC Server Encrypted Password

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Please can this work with manycam 6.6.0 or could you help in cracking it and give a link to download it have search google for it but all i found are trojans and old versions

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In a way, this is just ripping of code from other crackers who must have had invested a lot of their time in developing the patch (including learning the art). It would have been more educational for people to learn it the old way. Well whatever, for people wanting to use shortcuts, this trick may be damn useful.

BTW, I suggest updating the post to use the patcher from AT4RE as it supports more features.

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This patch is all in one, means all program also can use this patch?

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If I have a software program where no patch was ever created how can I design my own?

Thank You

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very nice

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Wow if you think this is hard you must be compleate noob I mean COME ON Read and try it I can ftp/telnet into most sites this is easy :) thanks for posting I made a private crack for ms10 wiht this method :) thanks again

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Crack My Software Free

Hey this tut is great. i was able to re-crack a program!

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thanks for your article mr. raymond. i found it very useful.

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Hello, Raymond. I like this article i am going to try this. Sony prs 300 update. Thanks for this…….

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Hi raymond its nice to meet this article! i want to crack some programs for my knowledge! thanks a lot!

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hi raymond.
very nice article.

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i have just pointed my 13 year old to this as i dont have much time to show him and he managed it first time>>>:)

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hi
your idea is fantastic .thanks for posted

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Thank you very much!
I think it’s very useful with me.

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it is very useful and worth trying for

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wow this is great!….

thanks a lot….

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good

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Hi thanks for this article i hope it would help me.

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i’ve never actually met someone braggin around about cracking himself the newer version of some program nor i’ve thought about it. But this certainly is very useful, i’ll try it on some next update.
Thanks a bunch Ray

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Hey Raymond,
Thank you very much for teaching this to me. I always keep finding cracks on the internet. But now I can make my own cracks ! :-)

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Wow interesting, im glad i signed up to receive your blogs. Excellent information keep up the good work!!

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wow thanx man

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Thanks, Ray!

I’ve often wondered about how to do this. very informative!

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Hi Raymond, I love your tutorials they are so useful. Thank you for your hard work :)

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Great mini tut thank for kepping us informed

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