Description:

Software Cracking is the art of breaking security protections in a software. Generally software cracks are distributed in the form of patches to the original software or keygen programs which generate arbitrary key / serial combinations. A Cracker works his way through a program by disassembling it and understanding the security protections built into it. He then proceeds to alter the behavior of the program by finding and changing (patching) the routines responsible for the security mechanisms, in order to allow full unlimited access to the program. Alternately, he can also reverse engineer the key / serial comparison routines and write a keygen for the program. This allows users to generate arbitrary valid keys / serials for the program.In this awesome video created by Spiffomatic64 , we learn about the basics of software cracking. Spiffomatic64 starts with a basic introduction to the tools of the trade - Ollydbg and Peid . He talks about Ollydbg in detail - the screen organization, shortcuts, how to run / pause programs, setting / removing breakpoints and how to inspect memory / code in a running program. He then uses a simple crackme prolixe_keygenme1 to show how software crackers work their way through a binary. He first verifies using Peid that the program has not been compressed or packed and then loads this program into Ollydbg, disassembles it and then proceeds to find the place in the code responsible for the annoying alert message shown in the beginning and then finally the place responsible for the key validation checks. Once the code in these routines have been understood, he proceeds to patch the binary to convert the crackme into a keygen :) Very nicely done. This video is a highly recommended watch for budding reverse engineers!I would recommend that users download the 3 programs mentioned above and try the entire process themselves. Thanks go out to Spiffomatic64 for submitting this video to SecurityTube. You can visit his site here.